Dolphinholme, mon amour

After a week of overnight roadworks within earshot of our house - at least, when the bedroom window was open, which, of course, it had to be during the hot nights of August - we were glad our holiday destination was in the middle of nowhere, with only the sound of tawny owls to disturb our sleep. 

It was all very grand. We were issued with a fob that opened the wrought iron gates remotely, like we'd been parachuted into 'Five get into Trouble' and were being admitted into the grounds of the rather sinister Owl's Dene. 

Not that we were staying in the hotel; rather, the coach house from when this place was a private residence. 

And very nice it was too, apart from there being a wasps' nest in the roof when we first arrived. There were acres of land to walk in, which was lovely for our collie, Cwtch, although she had to stay on the lead because there were lots of hares and rabbits already in residence, not to mention sheep and deer. 

Even the fungi was on the decorative side:

The Hall is just a stone's throw from the pretty River Wyre, which flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood.

One day we walked up its opposite bank to the village of Dolphinholme, but mostly we viewed it from the grounds of the Hall. 

To the east of our accommodation we could see the western edge of the Forest of Bowland, the same view that was always on the horizon when I was a student. It was in part these hills that made me want to come to Lancaster to study, as they reminded me a little of Dartmoor, but having no car back then, I never got to go up there.

So we did this time. Sadly, we couldn't go for a walk, as although it's access land, dogs aren't permitted, but I drove to the viewing point at Jubilee Tower, near Quernmore, from where we were at least able to get a closer look.

The jubilee in question was the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897.

Ward's Stone

Grit Fell

Clougha Pike

The more well-known names and landmarks were off to the west:

Looking up to Morecambe Bay and the Lake District

Heysham Power station, far right, and Lancaster University in the middle distance

The Lune estuary

Blackpool Tower, left of centre

Snowdonia in the far distance

One place I didn't revisit was the University of Lancaster campus, partly because dogs aren't allowed on site, but also because some things to do with that time are much more comfortably left in the past. I did, however, think it would be good to get to the horseshoe bend in the River Lune called Crook o' Lune, which was the name of the bar in our college, Lonsdale - this being in the original college buildings, which have now apparently been subsumed into neighbouring Bowland College, with Lonsdale rebuilt elsewhere. It was also a fond nickname for the then barman, John Allan, who wasn't averse to pouring a bottle of Crème de Menthe into the juke box when he wanted some peace and quiet, and was a bit of a legend. 

The famous view beloved by John Ruskin and painted by J M W Turner was obscured by mist, which was a bit ironic. 

We set off on a lovely flat path up the River Lune but the Northerner's knees were being particularly cantankerous and we had to turn back, the Crook eluding us on this occasion. I did find a magnificent pheasant tail feather, though, which conjured my grandmother. I wondered if it was the pheasant that was on one of her table mats when I was really small, before the era of the tin ones with their rather more arty scenes of London, but the memory was more tactile than that. Something about her maybe having a tail feather herself at some point, brought back from Scotland by my Auntie Peggy is ringing a distant bell ... or maybe I'm making it up, I can't be sure.

And pleasingly, if unexpectedly, we encountered one of Carol Ann Duffy's Pendle Witch poems, marking a stop on the route the prisoners took from the Pendle area to Lancaster Castle, where they were tried and hanged. 

A holiday Cwtch

Some holiday feathers:

magpie feather from the Wordsworths' garden, crow, jay, pheasant, kestrel, buzzard, tawny owl, mallard, curlew, oystercatcher, song thrush, mistle thrush

A Tale of Three Erics

The winter of 1981-82 was freezing. I was living in Morecambe, Lancashire at the time. The attic room I rented for, I think, £6 or maybe £6.50 per week, had purple walls - 'like the inside of a Ladyshave box', one fellow-student quipped - which were so damp, mushrooms started growing all across them. One day we borrowed a thermometer off some physics students and took the temperature in the bathroom, which had a broken window. It was minus 18°C. Then our horrible landlord, who would walk into our bedrooms unannounced, decided to store a load of bricks in the bath, so we couldn't use it anyway.

Since I was only one year old during the fabled winter of 1962-63, 1981-82 is the coldest winter I can remember.

And it was dire. We had to go to the pub to use the toilets when all the pipes in the house froze. We took to bunking down on the floors of students lucky enough to have rooms on campus to try to get warm. I developed a hacking cough, which became a chest infection, which caused a weakness that was to plague me for some winters to come. My boyfriend broke up with me. Worse yet, I took him back a short while later, and - a few years after that - married him. And yet ... and yet ... there were things about Morecambe that winter that I loved. The bleakness of the bay - all those soft greys all the way to the horizon that were so easy on my eyes, and reminded me, somehow, of my beloved Dartmoor. The huge rise and fall of the tides that were remiscent of my native river, the Severn. And across the bay, the mountains of the Lake District, capped with snow for months on end. 

They weren't snowy yesterday - the first time I'd been back in 42 years - but my heart sang to see them again. Morecambe! Not the most beautiful place I've ever been to, but with one of the best views, even on a hot summer day. 

The Northerner, my blessedly lovely now-partner, and I didn't realise dogs aren't allowed on either the North or South beaches until we'd wandered from the Battery as far as the Midland Hotel, but since we clearly weren't disturbing anyone, we decided not to worry about it.

I must not start collecting gull feathers, I must not start collecting gull feathers ... 

`

... but curlew and oystercatcher feathers? Of course.

We stopped for a coffee in the 1930s extravaganza that is the Midland Hotel, largely because I wanted to see the artworks by Eric Gill, which had been in danger of being lost in the early 1980s, such was the delapidated state of the hotel, but which have now been saved and restored.

The frontage

Eric Gill's seahorses ...

... which look like they've been rather too free with the collagen lip injections. (Carved in situ by Gill and Donald Potter.)

The main staircase reminded us both of our local 1930s edifice, New Filton (Pegasus) House, which is part of Airbus and was completed a year earlier, in 1932.

Medallion featuring Neptune and Triton, designed and carved by Eric Gill and painted by Denis Tegetmeier, his son-in-law 

Bas-relief carved in situ by Gill, depciting Odysseus being welcomed from the sea by Nausicaa, as the epitome of hospitality 

My favourite artwork was the map of the coastline from Birkenhead (far right) to Whitehaven (far left). Such a strange perspective, and so whimsical and quirky, with the Midland right at its very centre. 

And yes, I know it's Eric Gill, and yes, I know he's problematic, to put it mildly:  being a fan of the Arts and Crafts Movement, I read Fiona MacCarthy's revelatory biography as soon as it was published in 2011 and was duly appalled, but at the same time, I love Picasso's art despite his apparent psychopathy, and Degas' despite his anti-semitism, and Gauguin's despite his propensity to impregnate underage Polynesian girls and give them syphilis; likewise, I admire Ezra Pound's 'The Cantos' and love 'Tarka the Otter' by Henry Williamson, though they were fascist sympathisers both. I believe works of art transcend their makers, and should stand on their own merit, though there's always a line to be drawn, and for me it's at J K Rowling, whose dangerous behaviour is happening right now. Not another penny of mine will finance her persecution of trans people.

 

Seahorse mosaic, desighed by Marion Dorn

The other art I would have loved to have seen in the Midland Hotel was the mural painted by the second Eric of the day, Ravilious, on the circular wall in the cafe, but the plaster it was painted on was poorly finished and it was lost a couple of years after it was completed, which was long before my time. 

Another thing that was missing was the Central Pier ... gone! Apparently, it caught fire in 1991 and was demolished the next year after being deemed unsafe - the second pier Morecambe lost, following the demolition of the West End pier in 1978, after it had sustained serious storm damage. And you know what they say about piers: to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. 

And yet there was some new art, much of it bird-based. I adored these - well, I'm not sure if they're cormorants or shags, but they're lovely and I wanted one, but they were quite firmly fixed to their posts.

And we went to see Eric no 3, of course; Eric Morecambe, who died the day after my finals finished in May 1984. The flag at Lancaster University was flown at half mast.

More cormorants/shags at the entrance to the stone jetty ... 

... and along its length ... 

... plus this brooding 'Mythical Bird', near the lighthouse. I loved all of it. I wouldn't go so far as to say Morecambe's been gentrified since my last visit, but it certainly feels like it's loved these days, and that's far better.