In the 1980s and 90s, when we were regular weekend visitors to our Derbyshire caravan from Nottingham our first stop was always the Barley Mow in Bonsall. A cheese and onion pie for me and cauliflower cheese for Deirdre, both with chips, signalled a respite from the stresses of work and the start of a weekend of laziness, escape, fresh air, walking and breathing at our own pace and not having to hop around at someone else’s behest. Alan Webster was the landlord. He always made us welcome and introduced me to the Derbyshire folk music scene. Cramped in the single bar, elbows poking into someone else’s ribs, a glorious pint of Hartington bitter on the table in front of me - this was where I had my pub performing debut. Alan entertained a bizarre, fascinating and eccentric coterie of regulars. There was a three-fingered mandolin player, a very good Marilyn Monroe impressionist and a well-known author who immortalised many of the characters in a best-selling novel.
One night Alan sat us at a table with two guys who were very high on something other than alcohol. Being high was a problem for one of them, however, he was a window cleaner with a fear of heights. He kept importuning Deirdre to let him buy her a drink, a serious mistake because she tested his resolve by asking him for champagne. Without hesitation he ordered a bottle, and then finding he liked the taste himself, ordered another bottle. When we ran into them again the next day they had no recollection of us at all. On the first weekend of August there were the hen races which were featured on TV. Alan used to advise us on walks, in fact he led famous walks to the sites of supposed alien landings. It was he who taught us to pronounce “Ible, as in Bible”.
Having trodden every footpath around Crich repeatedly, we decided it was time to tread the backwoods of Ible. Three lanes converge on it, but go nowhere else. I had a little trepidation because the path downward was marked on my OS map but not on my OS app. However, such intrepid adventurers, in the peak of condition as ourselves, were not to be deterred. Even a sign asking us not to use the path because it went through someone’s garden and Covid-19 was a factor, proved no barrier. The alternative would have been to walk down the lane to the main road and then walk along the Via Gellia for some way. Our chances of surviving the haulage vehicles and huge rattling lorries from the Longcliffe facility were less than imparting or succumbing to the Covid-19 virus.
It meant, however, that we were the first people to use the walk since the virus threatened the sanctity of Ible. First we waded through shoulder high cow parsley, then swished through steep meadows of long grass, anxiously feeling the ground with our poles, then hobbled down fields deeply pock-marked by cattle hooves during the wet weather. Eventually we had to balance on logs and stones and squelch through mud and dung to the little gate that wound down to the road.Up the other side of the valley and through deep unvisited garlic
scented woods we trekked. Usually if I spot a bull in a field we’re crossing I forebear to point it out to Deirdre in case she stampedes or manifests some other form of bovine phobia. This time she quite calmly remarked that there was a bull. “I know,” I said. “It’s a Charolais,” I added reassuringly. We briefly discussed an exit strategy, but the bull was far more interested in a rather attractive Friesian he had cornered against the far wall.
So we reached the car in triumph. In triumph because 'at risk and vulnerable' though we may officially be, we had battled on, we had not twisted ankles or fallen over or had heart failure. I had not had to carry Deirdre back to ask for help from the people who had asked us not to go through their garden, nor had we to trouble the emergency services in anyway. Through jeopardy and inhospitable terrain we had marched on, heads held high and conquered the label we had lived under since March.
But of course you can always see a bull coming, but Covid-19 is altogether a more dangerous blighter.