The Long Road

A short section of a very long story—

A couple of days ago, TLC and I were heading back to our digs, aching and bone-deep weary after we’d somehow changed a quick stroll before dinner into a route march across poorly-mapped pastureland and rocky hillsides. Honestly, we do this to ourselves so often that it’s even funny anymore.

The last part of the track was, luckily, mostly downhill but there was one last upward dogleg to navigate. I sensed TLC slowing. She’s had trouble recently with her knees and Achilles tendon, yet she’s the one who will always lead us into uncharted territories. Wordlessly, I reached out my hand. Wordlessly, she took it and we negotiated the last slope together.

‘Thanks for the assist,’ she said once we were heading downhill again.

‘You know I’m always here for it,’ I said.

---

Park that moment. We’ll come back to it.

Hello from Cheshire. More accurately, hello from Lyme, a stately home and gardens set in 1400 acres of parkland on the western edge of the Peak District. There are deer runs and lakeside strolls and, as we’ve already ascertained, miles of walks to accidentally start.

Home base for this week is West Lodge, one of two gatekeeper’s cottages on the estate. Lyme is owned and run by the National Trust, and staying on the grounds of a place like it has been on our bucket list for quite some time. The NT have hundreds of rentals available. They’re a bit pricier than your average Airbnb but are guaranteed to be well appointed and a bit out of the ordinary. Like last month’s Ebeneezer Chapel, West Lodge has high ceilings, solid stone floors and a real sense of history. And, interestingly, there’s another Methodist church 150 yards down the road. It’s that old coincidental weirdness chasing us around again.

Lyme was owned by the Legh family from the 1400s until the handover to the public in 1946. The house is huge, a mashup of different architectural styles as new wings and frontages were added over the centuries. It’s the image of an English stately home, which is why it’s been used for film and TV location work, most famously as Pemberley in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The pond out front? That’s the one Colin Firth took a plunge into from in a moment which sent hearts a-racin’ and pants a-dampenin’—and does to this day, if the merch in ye olde gift shoppe is any clue.

If you want to channel your inner Austen, Lyme sweetly offers you the opportunity to take advantage of a well-stocked dressing room and stroll the grounds in full Regency get-up. We spotted several folk in top-coats and cravats or Empire-line dresses, ‘Gramming their little hearts out. Who says cosplay is just for Comic-con?

The heart of Empire vibe continued as we took a drive into Derbyshire to visit TLC’s ancestral home, Buxton. A Georgian spa town with eyes on the touristic opportunities of places like Bath, it has its own genteel vibe, posh but still approachable. Most importantly, you can get Derbyshire oatcakes in many of the local cafes. Not sure of the differences between those and the Staffordshire version. I guess an extensive taste test is called for to see which version of the tasty savoury pancake is most to our taste. The winner of this particular competition will be me.

Buxton has an Opera House, a Regency-style Crescent (now home to a high-priced hotel). The Pavilion is an opulent centrepiece, recently and ravishingly refurbished. Glass domes, lots of stained glass, plenty of gallery space and a pop-up for the excellent Buxton Brewery, who were very happy to take an embarrassing amount of my money. Readership, I even bought the t-shirt.

Yes, you can drink Buxton water in Buxton. No, not the stuff in plastic bottles you pick up as part of a Tesco meal deal. This is the spring water, the elixir of life which brought crowds and money pouring into the town. There are a couple of taps, including one in the opulent pump house, where you can partake of the waters like a proper Victorian tourist. Tasting notes—it’s warm and extremely minerally. I’m not sure about the health benefits—I’d imagine too much would fur up your pipes something rotten. If you want a libation to wash down your oatcake, try Girl From Mars from the Brewery. Now there’s a local drink I can heartily recommend.

As part of a little wander round TLC’s back pages, we took a steep winding drive up to The Cat And Fiddle, a legendary coaching inn which closed in 2014, before reopening after a huge crowd-funding push to become England’s highest distillery. It is a place where you could indeed get high, although the road down is not one you want to negotiate while intoxicated. Maybe just a half in the cosy bar, then grab a bottle of their excellent gin or whiskey and have a glass once you’re closer to sea level is my advice.

Let’s talk a little about the roads. We thought we were used to twisty turny narrow tracks—any time spent driving in Northumberland or Cornwall will get you used to spending time with your nose in hedges. Here in the Peaks, though, there is a special blend of panic-inducement. The roads devolve into switchbacks with little warning, and the local drivers are—now, let me think a sec, to get the right sense of impatience, entitlement and utter, hare-brained recklessness at play, ah yes, here we go—fucking nutters. They will launch themselves past you into neck-breaking dog-legs, over blind summits with no thought of the consequences should traffic be coming the other way. Factor in the popularity of the Peaks to cyclists, who have some bizarre masochistic urge to pedal up the sort of incline I’d engage Harvette’s Hill Assist for and you have a perfect recipe for a huge, terrible pile-up. So far we’ve stayed safe. I’ll offer a fake apology to anyone who found themselves slightly inconvenienced by a Honda taking the switchback through Winnat’s Pass 5mph more slowly than they would have liked but seriously, pals, chill the fuck out a little.

That run down through the high, steep walls of Winnat’s Pass will lead you to the pretty town of Castleton. It’s been a hub for mining since Roman times. Back then, the material of choice was lead. Today, the attraction is a shimmering semi-precious stone called bluejohn. It shines in different hues of turquoise and cerulean, with accents of tiger-eyed yellow. Great for costume jewellery, it’s only really found in Derbyshire. Rarity somehow hasn’t inflated the value and we picked up a lovely pendant and ear-ring set (for TLC in case you’re wondering) for under £200. I left empty-handed but then, as she said, my gift is her continued place by my side. Also, I couldn’t find anything I liked.

It would be a missed opportunity for a town called Castleton not to have a castle. Peveril looms over the village, on a slope high enough to force you to take the ascent in stages (we are olds and our knees creak just getting off the sofa, stop laughing). Built as a hunting lodge and a base for the King’s forest keepers to enforce jurisdiction and restriction on hunting in the woodland, it saw little Royal use. Instead, it served as an ever-present reminder of authority and its bullying cousin—power. Peveril fell into disuse in the 16th century, used primarily as herding pens for sheep. Even now, though, looking out over its ruined walls at the peaks and valleys beyond, you can see how potent a symbol of the class structure it would have been.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that contrast this week. Peveril, Lyme and to an extent Buxton are images of striated society, places where working-class presence would not have been tolerated. You were expected to know your place and your place was not there. Our ability to wander these halls and galleries at will (or at least for an entry fee) would have been unthinkable back in the day. But let’s not pretend England is open to her people. Right to roam is heavily restricted—8% of land, 3% of rivers. The forest keepers of Peveril would have felt comfortable in this restrictive environment.

For a bracing hit of context, I recommend a visit to Quarry Bank, a cotton mill near Manchester owned by the Greg family, who lived on site. Still operating, it was a bright star of the Industrial Revolution, cranking out thousands of yards of cloth weekly for domestic and international markets.

As the excellent exhibition spaces run at the top of the Mill make clear, this success was driven by exploitation and suffering. The raw cotton was supplied by slave plantations, including some owned by Samuel Greg. Two thirds of the work force were children, who were preferably apprenticed to the mill at ten. At this age they were deemed most easily mouldable, the better to learn how to work the equipment. Many would never leave, even after paying off their indenture. Places like this were the motor which drove the wheels of Empire.

There is a brutal honesty and pragmatism on display at Quarry Bank which cuts through any cant about ‘the good old days’ or ‘kids want everything handed to them.’ Children were a useful but disposable asset, easy to pick up and apply as needed. Despite the efforts of women like Hannah Greg, mill owner Samuel’s wife, to agitate for better conditions, this was how it was. The mill simply couldn’t have run without them. How Hannah managed to draw a line between her kids playing happily in the garden and the ones toiling for twelve hours a day behind the walls of the mill is beyond me.

Wandering the grounds and gardens of Quarry Bank in the sun, you feel hopeful we’re past all that, that the only kids you’ll see in a cotton mill are the ones running around with their parents having a lovely day out. Sorry, that’s not the case. Agriculture and fashion worldwide still benefit from child labour. It’s estimated that 151 million workers aged 5-17 are involved in some form of work, frequently unpaid, almost certainly on long shifts. Some of the clothes in your wardrobe will have been handled at some point in their manufacturing cycle by kids.

Quarry Bank is a grand day out, but it also serves as a sobering lesson in the grinding cogs of the world, and how people are an exploitable resource.

Phew. That got dark. Please forgive, let’s finish on a brighter note. Watch out as I execute a One Show-style tonal handbrake turn, slewing us right into the path of the elephant in the road.

2024 is a big year for TLC and I. In August, we’ll have been in Reading for 20 years, living in a house which we have now paid for. It’s a strange feeling, complicated by the appearance of unexpected and hefty maintenance bills. Collapsing drains, critters in the walls, all the fun stuff. We love expensive surprises.

Then there’s the small issue of the anniversary. TLC—Clare, come on, we’ve known each other long enough for us all to be on first-name terms by now—and I were married in July of 1994. Do the maths. Use the fingers and toes on both sets of hands and feet and some borrowed from a friend.

Thirty years. It feels odd even typing those words. It is an occasion which needed to be marked. We thought about heading off to Paris for the Olympics, but finances were at a tenuous point where we needed to focus on getting the mortgage crossed off. Instead, we chose Lyme, staying in a beautiful area close to Clare’s heart, in digs we knew we’d—dig. Seriously, we’ve talked about staying at a National Trust cottage for a very long time. We’re already thinking about the next one. If only the budget would stretch to Cragside…

Thirty years. It amazes us but seems to boggle the brains of a lot of people. How do we do it? Aren’t we sick of each other by now?

Well, I mean—obviously not, as we’re in a cottage miles from anywhere with just the two of us and not even a dog to break things up a bit. We get along, simple as that. We can always find something to talk about and if not, well, we’re comfortable being quiet at each other. We’re both introverts, both a bit arty in our own ways. Clare deals with the finances. I’m the more capable of the two when it comes to putting up shelves and slapping paint around. We complement each other. In the end though, it comes down to one simple fact—there’s no-one else we want to be with for most of the time.

Yeah, it’s a long path. But we’re on it for the long haul. Happily so. We’re heading into the future the same way we dealt with that last hill before the track twined us down to West Lodge, so many many words ago.

Heads up, hand in hand, facing the sun, and every so often looking at each other with a smile.