A Sunday search for the hamlet of Blubberhouses in the Yorkshire Moors, and how I found many small villages, and how Blubberhouses eluded me.
North Yorkshire contains a host of places whose names boggle the mind and tickle the imagination. Hidden in the Yorkshire Moors they have a long history. Here stands Mankinholes, where Mawn, or peat was dug, forming holes. There went the hamlet of Stalling Busk, the vanished village of Leake, wiped out by Scots, Danes, or the Plague. There's the village of Swine, in the Domesday Book Suuine, meaning creek or channel, and the hamlet of Booze, of the hard-drinking lead miners. There is also the hamlet of Crackpot, meaning cleft or cranny, and Giggleswick, the house of farmer Ghigel, who undoubtedly in those hard times of long ago indulged in little laughter. Then there are Thwing, Timble, and the Land of Nod, a hamlet at the end of an arrow-straight 2-mile long cul-de-sac.
Blubberhouses is not far from Harrogate, from where I explore the small places lost in the North Yorkshire moors. How did a few dwellings in the middle of England become Blubberhouses? Whales rendered into candles for the dark winter nights? Why would Blubberhouses, far from the sea, attract whales?
Early one bright winter Sunday I followed the signs for Blubberhouses, 7 miles ahead. Sudden squalls of rain played games with the corn and the sheltering birds. I decided to have tea, and the rain, satisfied, stopped just as I entered the converted farmhouse. The tea and cakes were delicious, but the lady of the house had no idea as to how Blubberhouses came by its name. I wondered what it would look like. I have seen small villages in Yorkshire dreaming in a mist of rain, mysterious amongst the trees, lost in time. I have come across uncompromising mining villages, clinging tenaciously to the present, with no past and no future. I wanted to see this hamlet with the strange name, so that I could pack it away with my memories of other places.
On the road again I passed the Nelson Inn, and kennels for Irish wolfhounds, looking out of place in the rural landscape. Then, on the right I saw a cluster of giant white golf balls on a small hill. They look at home, these giant radar structures, somehow comfortable and reassuring, a natural part of the countryside. Originally thought of as an alien American base, this collection of white radar domes blends with the soft green countryside like a modern Stonehenge. A sign pointed straight across the fields to the Menwith Hill communication facility.
Now the wind was gusting strongly. I looked for signs pointing towards Blubberhouses, but they had disappeared. I passed the Black Bull pub on the right and drove on towards Skipton, past signs for Otley and Shrimp Cross Caverns. Smaller signs announced nearby farmhouses offering bed-and-breakfast, but Blubberhouses seemed to have lost itself. The rain came and went like some nervous visitor, and I began to wonder if I had missed a signpost, leaving Blubberhouses hiding in some valley behind me.
At last I saw the Hopper Lane Hotel, which had been given as a guidepost by a friend. "Down the hill," the man said confidently, finishing his pint. "Turn right at the bottom. You can't miss it."
I coasted down the hill, tires swishing in the rain. At each bend I tensed slightly. Would the hamlet reveal itself in a blaze of glory? Would a village with such a name look somehow different from others of its kind? The bottom of the hill appeared. Signposts pointed.
"Dacre," they said. "Pately Bridge. Spring Cross Caverns." Was that the same as Shrimp Cross Caverns? I had probably gotten confused. But here was nothing that remotely resembled Blubberhouses. A further sign to our right read "West End", and I thought of the fleshpots of London.
I started to climb back up, the road cutting through slabs of granite. On my right was a cemetery of wooden grave markers, about a foot high, crutches for young trees. The ground sloped up behind them and at the top a slab of granite reared from the ground like an old cathedral. I passed abandoned stone cottages and vertical fields with a few sheep. A sign warned of rockslides. I wondered whether to carry on to Skipton. Then, at the top of the hill, with the clouds suddenly parting from the sun, I saw a small island and a sign, pointing to the right.
"One quarter mile. Blubberhouses... ," I read, and just as I turned onto the narrow yellow road, "...quarry." I thought that the quarry was undoubtedly part of the village whose name it bore. I seemed to have arrived at the top of the world, and the narrow road pointed straight to a horizon devoid of landmarks. The pale light of the sun shone strangely on the rocky brown fields, totally deserted. I saw rock walls ahead, on either side of the road, and thought "This is it, Blubberhouses." Then I arrived, and there were openings in the walls, leading to empty fields.
Directly ahead, quite far away I saw the golf balls of Menwith Hill, and thought, "I'll drive straight on. I can get home from Menwith." But suddenly the road became a dirt path, or turned at a 900 angle, depending on how one feels about the behavior of roads, and I U-turned the car with some difficulty.
As I retraced my steps past the bleak fields, I wondered where I had erred. Coming back to the little island, I saw the reverse of the treacherous sign that had led me nowhere. Two and a quarter miles to Blubberhouses, back the way I had come. I turned left, in hot pursuit.
I flew down the hill, past the stone cathedral, and the tree graveyard, past the ruined cottage and the precipice fields, and at the bottom the signs pointed to West End and Dacre, and Pately Bridge. The sun and the rain were chasing each other as I wound upwards again to the Hopper Lane Hotel, looking for a sign. I was still looking as I went back past signposts saying Otley, Fewston, Harrogate, past the Black Bull, past the Irish wolfhounds and the Nelson Inn. The golf balls waved me goodbye, and I sailed into Harrogate and home, still asking the question.
"Where is Blubberhouses?"
