Tuesday 4 September 2007

The North Wind Doth Blow ....

… but brought with it only sunshine. I’ve just spent a happy week in Northumberland, my favourite part of the UK, and my home when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I could wax lyrical about the beauty and grandeur of Northumberland - those windswept, empty beaches, the haunting calls of the sea birds, the sense of mysticism, of history, of holiness, that permeates those northern shores. Not to mention the river valleys with their rushing water and purple hills, where often your only audible companions are the bleats of sheep and the lonely calls of curlews. But there are other bloggers who make their lives there, who know it all much better than me, and who are perhaps less prone to the romantic view I hold of the North East, as is the wont of exiles.

So what impressions can I share, that won’t make any readers yawn? It’s quite an emotive journey for me, that long drive up the A1, as it brings back so many memories of heading ‘home’ after we’d first moved down south. The mounting excitement felt as roadsigns appear announcing The NORTH. (Funny to think that my children will feel ‘home’ when they see The EAST). The sense of relief at being among people who talked like my sister and me, who said spelk for splinter and clarty for muddy, and who didn’t think my Mum, with her strong Geordie accent, was foreign, and who wouldn’t laugh at my flat ‘a’s (that was before the need to conform took hold of me, though my ‘a’s still change from sentence to sentence). Memories of family gatherings in Newcastle and the villages of the Tyne valley, at Christmas and Easter, then our annual two weeks on the coast in summer. The smell of seaweed and fish and chips. Making sandcastles that mirrored the imposing fortresses that loom over the beaches in this part of the world. Rough grey seas with tiny fishing boats bobbing madly on bad weather days, blue green sea with white sand to rival the Caribbean on good days. Heading back down south, to what eventually became a much loved home, but which for a long time was a foreign land. Listening to my Mum crying at night, when she thought we couldn’t hear, because she was so homesick for the north. Sitting in assembly one day at primary school in the South East, singing Jerusalem, and the headmaster explaining that the line ‘dark satanic mills’ apparently meant the area around Newcastle, where it was ‘grimy’. The other children tittering, and my big sister putting her hand up to explain, politely, that there weren’t any mills there, but being ignored.

But I digress, as ever. Back to the week we just spent, and the pleasure I get in seeing my children playing, each year, where I used to play, discovering the same things, feeling the same wind (sometimes cutting, it must be said, though not this week) on their faces. Seeing them wander around the limekilns at Beadnell, digging with their bucket and spades in the shadow of the castle at Bamburgh, watching and listening for the seals on Holy Island, eating fish and chips at the harbour in Seahouses, flying kites at Alnmouth, hiding in the dunes at Embleton. Playing on the stepping stones at Ingram in the Breamish Valley, and falling in, as I always used to. Taking a picnic to the heart of Coquetdale, and for once not have to wrap up in a fleece. Standing in silence looking out over Whittingham Vale. We didn’t get as far as the Roman Wall this time, my son’s favourite bit of England, but still, a perfect week. And Michael Owen even started scoring again, just for us, it seemed.

But what was different, this time, was making new friends. Meeting people who I’ve got to know from the internet, via blogging. Not something that I would ever have thought I would do, and how weird it feels to write that I did, to have travelled a few hundred miles to meet perfect strangers. And yet strangers were the last thing that they were. It’s funny to think how long it can take us to make new friends, once we’re past our sociable teens and twenties. The first espying of someone who looks like we might like them; the gradual building up of acquaintance, seeking out opportunities to meet, the delight in finding mutual likes and dislikes. On meeting these two Northumbrians, it felt like the groundwork had already been done, that we were just picking up where we’d left off. Fabulous to meet two such warm and friendly people, fantastic to think we might all meet again. Thanks again for your hospitality to me and my children, you two, and my heart soars whenever I think of you both in your beautiful part of the world.

I don’t stay on the A1 all the way to London any more, but turn left and east to get home now. Funny how I’ve made my home by another eastern shore, in another sparsely populated, quiet land, with the same vast, vaulted skies and lonely farms. We have ancient hedgerows instead of dry stone walls, timber-framed houses painted mellow pink instead of fortified stone bastles, and stunning medieval churches soaring from the prairie fields, instead of purple hills. My heart always breaks a little when I leave the hills of the north, but starts to mend as I come back to this gentle, verdant land. It’s good to be back.

28 comments:

toady said...

Well I think all you Cooers that have blogged about Northumberland should immediately be employed by the Tourist office. Lovely blog as usual SM. I will get up there one day.
Toady

Anonymous said...

You captured that beautifully, SM. I have to say, to be classed as a Northumbrian is quite an honour. And if I ever meet your old headmaster, I might just cast a nasty spell on him!

Glad you go home safely and so happy you had a wonderful time. You are a pleasure to know and a very special person.

Crystal xx

Un Peu Loufoque said...

Glad you had such a great time as ever you write it very well...now to business miss!!!!

ok have revised instructions for links on your posting on the common room...you an go in and revise this post and try and add links under edit a post option...hope it works!

ps I have not done blossoms homework either!!!

Ska, not a good mother but working on it said...

lovely blog as ever. We love Northumbria too and will be going up at half term.

Isn't it starnge where we end up? I would never have predicted I'd be in a small village with fields all around, having spent all of my teenage years trying to escape from a small town to London!

Milla said...

Nice to have you back SM and good luck to your little girl tomorrow. The day the second goes to big school is tearful indeed.

muddyboots said...

and another one heads up to northumberland! glad you had such a good time!

Anonymous said...

As always beautiful. Evokes wonderful pictures in the mind!

Posie said...

Oh a fabulous blog SM, you capture the atmosphere of the north east so well with your descriptions, really felt transported there, I could smell the sea air as I read it...

Sally Townsend said...

I felt like that when I met Muddy too, can't speak for her but we did laugh and laugh, and that's no bad thing is it ?

Tattieweasle said...

You put into words just how I feel when I drive up the A1 but for me it's every sign for Yorkshire. I love that sense of dramatic build up as each junction goes by then its our turn and I drive towards Sutton Bank and I miss it so... not that I don't love Suffolk. It's just not Yorkshire....yet.

Anonymous said...

Northumberland is lovely, I loved the Alnmouth, the background on my phone was of the beach there. Its changed following this years holiday to a view from Sutton Bank in Yorkshire.

Faith said...

So many of you say how lovely it is there that I wish I could go!

LITTLE BROWN DOG said...

I always enjoy reading your blogs, Suffolkmum - you describe things so beautifully, so evocatively and it's always so evident that what you say comes directly from the heart - something quite rare and precious in today's world.
I love that part of the world - there's something really quite mystical about it. And I know just what you mean about those empty beaches, the cutting wind and the choppy North Sea.

Westerwitch/Headmistress said...

Oddly I was born in the South and yet always got a thrill when I saw the NORTH sign . . .only happy when going North . . .and now living in the North - hate going South.

How lovely to re-live times gone through watching your children play.

How lovely too to meet up with Purplecooers and to really enjoy their company . . .dare I ask if you all had your skool uniforms on!!!!

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

I love Northumberland too and all those place names set me off - holidays in Bambrugh, trying to park the car in Alnwick, arriving at Dunstanboroug in the dusk while everyone else was leaving. Glad you had such a great time and envy you your meetings. I appreciate that I have had lots of my own!

Jane said...

My parents were exiles from Northumberland - though moving North, not South, to East Lothian.
Their accents may have gone, except from on the phone, and their children and grandchildren are Scots, but when the family gets together it is definately a Northumbrian one.
It is daft - I spent my childhood shuttling back and forward to Cramlington, but know very little of the area. Our time was spent in cups of tea and elaborate parlour games in people's houses. My love of allotments and rag rugs are straight from my summers in colliery villages.
Glad you had a wonderful time,
J
x

Frog in the Field said...

It is indeed strange how we socialise these days. I feel a great affinity with several bloggers, I doubt I'll ever meet them, but they make me feel not alone in being a Mother, because no matter how wonderful your partner may be, it's a lonely business sometimes.
Since blogging I've definitely felt a little more understood and that I actually can communicate with adults still.

Pig in the Kitchen said...

It's such a thrill to go back to somewhere that is 'home', and childhood 'homes' have much more resonance than places we arrive at later in life it seems.
Lovely post.
Pigx

Chris Stovell said...

Lovely to have you back and to read your account of Northumberland - Tom and I were planing to go there for a holiday but then this house in Wales came up so it's been good to read about that part of the world.

My lovely brother-in-law is a Geordie and I have to admit that when we met him all those years ago (he met my sis at university)that his accent was very exotic to our southern ears. Poor chap is ribbed when he goes back 'home' now for sounding like 'a soft southern poofter'!

Kitty said...

Oh how lovely, it is so gorgeous up there. But I am pleased too, reading your comments to see two comments about Sutton Bank - and the view from the top, it's my favourite. And you'll see it too when you come and visit, won't you? (I'm going to nag you for ever...)

And we loved Wallington - I thought about you as a little girl going for Sunday tea.

Grouse said...

Just beautiful, SF

Withy Brook said...

How I wish I had been here instead of in France, when you came. I have lived here for 26 years now and my heart has definitely attached itself to the place. Your blog made me think yet again how lucky I am to be here, it was so evocative. Next time you come please visit some of the central and southern charms of the county - Wallington and Belsay being two.
The mentions of Sutton Bank struck home too. I was born and grew up on the Tees near Yarm and Sutton Bank was always a challenge to drive up in those days!

Elsie Button said...

lovely post. and how wonderful that you watched your children enjoying the same things you used to when you were a child. very special. it must almost be like reliving your childhood through them.

Exmoorjane said...

Oh SM, that was so beautiful. Funny isn't it, that 'yippeee' moment, that frisson, when you see THE NORTH. I ran away from the South-East when I was eighteen and went to college in Manchester.... since then I have always had a deeply soft spot for the North but, up until the summer, had only known the North-West and not ventured North-Eastwards. Won't make that mistake again.
Aren't they lovely, our Northumberland bloggers? So wish our holidays had coincided.
jxxxx

Livvy U. said...

Hello, I came over to you from Elsie Button's blog and thought I must leave a short comment to say how well I think you write. Gather from previous post/comments that you had a dissenter going there for a little while - noticed you weren't confident about the writing part - thought I should be another voice simply saying how nice it is to find another well-written blog. My heart always leaps when I do.
Best wishes.

Suffolkmum said...

Hello Livvy U, thanks for your lovely message, it's always so nice toget new comments!

Blossomcottage said...

Now I am really going to have to visit Northumberland, Lovely Hubby always talking in warm tones about it after spending sometime there when he was a locum vet. Thanks for your lovely writing and great experience.
Love Blossom

@themill said...

Late to the party, as always! Sigh.
Lovely blog about Britain's Best Kept Secret - although it is becoming less so! Great to meet you and your lovely babes. How funny we can feel an instant connection to someone you've never met before.
I'm sure someone should be doing a Phd on the Physcology of Blogging!