The Road to Little Dribbling (36 page)

Let me take just a moment to say some numbers. Britain has 450,000 listed buildings, 20,000 scheduled ancient monuments, twenty-six World Heritage Sites, 1,624 registered parks and gardens (that is, gardens and parks of historic significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 18,500 medieval churches, and 2,500 museums containing 170 million objects. Having such a fund of richness means that it can sometimes be taken for granted to a shocking degree, but it also means that very often you find you have something quite wonderful pretty much to yourself, as I did with Derwent Reservoir today.

It is managed by Severn Trent Water, a utility, which provides a little visitor center with a tea counter and a small parking lot, which was mostly empty when I arrived. A lovely walk goes around the lake, and connects with two nearby reservoirs, Howden and Ladybower, both also very fetching.

Derwent Reservoir is notable for one other thing. It was here that they practiced for the famous dam-busters raids of the Second World War when the British engineer Barnes Wallis invented his celebrated bouncing bombs. These were designed to skip across water, like a stone across a pond, until they hit a dam wall, at which point, it was proposed, they would explode with devastating consequences. In practice, the scheme didn’t really work. The low-flying planes were easy targets for German gunners—40 percent of the squadron didn’t return from the first mission—and many bombs exploded spectacularly but harmlessly in the water or bounced straight over the dam walls and detonated in neighboring fields. Only one dam was seriously breached. The floodwaters from it killed 1,700 people, but those were mostly Allied prisoners, so in fact Barnes Wallis killed more people on his own side than on the German one. But never mind. It was one of those feats of wartime ingenuity that could be set alongside radar and the Enigma machine as evincing Britain’s indomitable spirit and ingenuity. In 1955, the bouncing bombs story was made into a film much beloved by the people who program daytime movies on television. I don’t believe I have ever had the flu without watching
Dam Busters
at some point.

I had a good walk along the Derwent and Howden reservoirs, enjoying the combination of shady woodland and sun-splashed water, amazed that I could have this much splendor to myself. On the way back to the parking lot, I passed an imposing stone monument to a sheepdog named Tip, which, according to the inscription, “stayed by the body of his dead master, Mr. Joseph Tagg, on the Howden Moors for fifteen weeks.” That’s a very long time. Mind you, Tagg was lying on the dog’s lead. Actually, I don’t know what the story was, but I do know that personally I would be more inclined to pay for a monument that said, “In memory of Tip, who went for help when I needed it.”

It was interesting, I thought, that the memorial to Tip was grander than the memorial to the men who took part in the dam-busters raids, but then I remembered that this was England and Tip was a dog.

—

The Peak District is 550 square miles of big skies and hilly beauty in the middle of the country where the Midlands and North subtly merge. The highest point in the Peak District at 2,100 feet is Kinder Scout, which stands just a few miles west of the Derwent Valley. Kinder Scout was the site of a celebrated act of civil disobedience in 1932 when workers from nearby factory towns defiantly walked across the Duke of Devonshire’s grouse moors. Their actions that day had much to do with the subsequent opening of much of the countryside to walkers, so I thought I would pay my respects as I was in the neighborhood. I parked in the pretty village of Hayfield and walked the mile or so to the trespass site at Bowden Bridge and was glad I had. Along the way I passed a terraced cottage with a blue plaque on it noting that this was the birthplace of the great character actor Arthur Lowe—Captain Mainwaring in the television series
Dad’s Army
. And there you have a perfect demonstration of the merits of foot travel over motorized travel, for if I had driven I would never have noticed the plaque, thus proving that a walker’s life is not only healthier but richer.

Kinder (it rhymes with “cinder”) Scout isn’t a peak, but a grassy plateau, visible in clear weather from Manchester and Sheffield, both about twenty miles away. That was the root of the problem, it seems. Workers in Manchester and Sheffield gazed dreamily upon Kinder Scout from their gritty neighborhoods and thought of it as their hill, the place where they could go for fresh air and spiritual refreshment at weekends, and for years they did. But in the 1920s, the Duke of Devonshire closed Kinder Scout to the public for the sake of his grouse shooting. This naturally bred resentment, and in April 1932 five hundred people, mostly factory workers, gathered at Bowden Bridge to undertake a protest walk across the duke’s land.

Tipped off about the hike, the duke’s gamekeepers were waiting and ordered the hikers to turn back. The result was a brief and rather endearingly ineffectual scuffle. One gamekeeper was knocked unconscious, probably accidentally, but there were no other injuries and the walkers swept past the gamekeepers and completed their march to the summit. The authorities, overreacting, arrested the group’s leaders and charged them with criminal trespass. Five men were sent to prison for up to five months—an outrageously disproportionate punishment. The result was a wave of anger and resentment that went well beyond Derbyshire. The Mass Trespass (as it is now invariably written) became an iconic moment in the history of both class struggle and the British countryside. In other countries they fight over politics and religion. In Britain, it is over who gets to walk on a windswept moor. I think that’s rather splendid.

The trespassers’ efforts were not in vain. Four years later, Parliament set up a committee to consider creating national parks across England. The Second World War intervened, but in 1951 the Peak District became England’s first national park. Considering the symbolic importance of the Mass Trespass, the memorial is modest nearly to the point of invisibility. It’s just a small plaque at the back of a parking lot, hanging about eight or ten feet up a quarry wall and half obscured by vegetation. If I hadn’t known to look for the plaque, I never would have noticed it. The words on it say simply: “The mass trespass onto Kinder Scout started from this quarry, 24th April 1932.” Across the road, a narrow lane beside a stream led up to the start of the footpath to Kinder Scout. It was a lovely day and wonderful countryside, but Kinder Scout was a taxing, three-hour hike from here. I still had to get to Buxton, at the other end of the Peak District, where I had a room booked, so I walked for only a mile or so toward Kinder Scout, just enough to get something of a view, then turned reluctantly and walked back to the car. Once again, I didn’t see a soul.

—

Buxton is an old spa town, mostly built of stone, mostly in the eighteenth century. The Pavilion Gardens, covering twenty-three acres in the very heart of the town, must be the most delightful town park in the country. Buxton has a striking opera house, a couple of grand hotels, and an outsized building with an impressive dome that was once a hospital and is now an outpost of the University of Derby. Near the gardens is a crescent-shaped building vaguely reminiscent of the famous Royal Crescent at Bath, but with the difference that this one has been derelict for years since structural problems were found in it. Plans exist to turn it into a hotel, but at the time of my visit it was still boarded up and surrounded by worksite fencing—a sad fate for a Grade I–listed building. (Grade I buildings are those of special architectural significance.) The problem is that the East Midlands Development Agency, which had promised £5 million of funding, was closed by the government in 2012 before the money could be paid over, so now this rare and lovely building, which ought to be contributing to the economy, sits quietly deteriorating as part of a national economy drive. The madness of modern life sometimes seems boundless.

I had a walk around the town, browsing in shopwindows. I was particularly taken with Potter’s, a men’s outfitters that has been in Buxton since 1860 and looks to be still going strong, which these days seems not so much an achievement as a miracle. I was immediately attracted to some shirts in the window, entirely because of the name: Seidensticker Splendestos. I know I am on the record as saying that I don’t need another thing, but who could resist that name? I am prepared to wear a shirt sight unseen if it’s called a Splendesto. It’s so good a name it ought to be a word in its own right, denoting a higher level of excellence beyond splendid. I even thought of a slogan for the company: “Splendesto—when splendid isn’t good enough.”

I grew up in an age when people valued good names. It was a time when washing machines had Luxe-o-Matic spin cycles, lawn mowers had Trigger-Torque starter buttons, record players had Vibro-Sonic speakers. Even clothing was exciting. My father once owned a McGregor Glen Plaid Visa-Versa Reversible Jacket and got real pleasure from showing people, including total strangers, how you could turn it inside out and have a second, bonus jacket. “That’s why it’s called Visa-Versa,” he would explain, as if revealing one of the secrets of the universe. He never called it “my jacket” or “the jacket.” It was always “my Visa-Versa Reversible.” Just saying the name gave him pleasure. I understand that.

All that is gone. Nowadays we have nothing but meaningless names. Look at Starbucks and their cup sizes—Venti, Trenta, and Wanko Grande or whatever. Giant corporations everywhere have names that mean nothing—Diageo, Lucent, Accenture, Aviva. I used to have an insurance policy with Windsor Life, but now the company is called ReAssure. That is a fabulous name if they ever decide to make incontinence pants for the elderly, but it is a terrible name for an insurer.

I miss having exciting product names in my life and felt a genuine pang of envy, as I stood looking in Potter’s windows, for the people who get to shop in such lovely old preserves. As I walked on, I fell into a little fantasy in which I saw myself calling in at Potter’s from time to time, for the linguistic pleasure of it as much as anything else.

“Good afternoon,” I say in my fantasy. “I special ordered a couple of Splendestos a week or two ago and I wonder if they are in yet.”

“Let me just check the book, Mr. Bryson,” says the manager and runs a finger down the page of an enormous leather-bound ledger. “They should be in on Wednesday,” he tells me.

“And what about my Lloyd, Attree & Smith brown Donegal-style tweed sports coat with faux suede elbow patches?”

“Let me look. Yes, that’s due on Wednesday, too.”

“Excellent. I’ll call back on Wednesday. For now I’ll just take these Sloggi Shur-Fit Boxer Shorts in mint green with cranberry piping.”

“Of course. Shall I wrap them for you?”

“No, I’ll wear them now.”

In the evening, comfortable in my new Sloggis (“So stylish you’ll want to wear them outside your trousers”), I would stroll to a public house for an aperitif and afterward I would dine at some nice little bistro near the gardens. That is in fact precisely what I did now, except that I wasn’t wearing Sloggi Shur-Fits outside my trousers, regrettably.

I had an excellent evening. When the waitress cleared my plate she asked me how my meal was.

“Oh, splendesto,” I said and meant it most sincerely.

—

In the morning, I woke keen and eager, for the sun was shining and I was to walk the Monsal Trail, which runs for eight and a half miles between Buxton and Bakewell, through tunnels and gorges and views of sumptuous beauty. This was originally part of the Midland Railway line from Manchester to Derby, but that closed in 1968. The route never made much economic sense since it ran through lightly populated countryside. One of its principal stations, Hassop, was built more or less for the private use of the Duke of Devonshire’s estate at Chatsworth. Today, restored as a roomy, level cycling route and footpath, it brings pleasure to far more people than ever it did when trains ran over it. It is a wonderful walk.

The moment of supreme glory is the crossing of Monsal Dale on the majestic Headstone Viaduct. Monsal Dale is a place of great natural beauty already, but the viaduct, three hundred feet long and standing high above green meadows and the little River Wye, raises it to an even more transfixing level. When the viaduct was built in 1863, the art critic John Ruskin famously raged against it, saying that a setting of tranquillity and beauty had been cruelly sacrificed just so that “every fool in Buxton can be in Bakewell in half an hour and every fool at Bakewell in Buxton.” Headstone Viaduct is often used as an example of how things that are hated when new later become treasured. Well, sure, that sometimes happens. But there is a difference here in that the Headstone Viaduct was from the start a thing of actual beauty, carefully built, which is rarely the case with intrusions on the landscape today.

Not far from Monsal Dale is a view nearly as good as, and even more historic than, the one that so exercised Ruskin, where the trail emerges from a long tunnel into a green valley. Holding a commanding position at the valley head is a white Georgian building that looks at first sight like a stately home. In fact, it is Cressbrook Mill, built by Richard Arkwright in 1779 (and rebuilt six years later after a fire) to spin cotton. It is quite the most handsome factory you will ever see and possibly the most important, for it changed the world. Along with Cromford Mill, built a few miles away near Matlock, this was where the factory system started. Everything that is manufactured on Earth today traces its beginnings back to this tranquil corner of rural Derbyshire. Arkwright built his mills in the narrow valleys of Derbyshire because they had plenty of water to power his machines and because the remote location made it less likely that they would be besieged by angry spinners put out of work by his new methods. It also made it easier for him to exploit his workers. Cressbrook Mill was operated mostly by orphans who were treated worse than abysmally.

Within half a century, the cotton industry employed over four hundred thousand people. Nearly everything that followed and made Britain great—shipbuilding, finance, the building of canals and railways, the growth of empire—had its foundations here. It is interesting to think that Britain’s commercial supremacy was built on a product, cotton, that Britain couldn’t grow and came from the one part of the empire it had lost and didn’t control. Derbyshire’s spell at the center of all this didn’t last terribly long. As the cotton industry grew, larger factories and bigger rivers were required, and the work moved to more urban places like Manchester and Bradford. Derbyshire sank back into a picturesque oblivion. Today Cressbrook Mill is upmarket apartments.