Living On Three Continents: Highway Robbery
Susan Siddeley and her husband were shocked at the high cost of food and drink in England - until they came upon The Highwayman Cafe.
Dick Turpin’s dramatic “stand and deliver”, echoed around cash registers, along counters and through every pub, café and gift shop we entered in England, in June of this year. As everyone knows, prices are high. Although it wasn’t at gunpoint, forking out large amounts of money for cups of tea, pork pies, The Observer and Marks and Spencer’s T-shirts, didn’t make for marital harmony. When a couple of war babies, raised on thrift and burnt toast, and used to making ten bob go a long way, start counting their small change, sleepless nights result.
“I could re-roof the house for the price of a pint,” spluttered my other half, Big G, as he emptied his pockets each night. “And, I could entertain a village in Chile for the price of a piece of silverside.” I felt upset to find myself agreeing with the old penny-pincher for once.
We tossed and turned, translating dollars into sterling, then back into Chilean pesos as the dusky northern light, only slowly, drained from the skies. It was a pointless exercise, and we knew it. It was all the more surprising therefore that our grumble was heard.
Driving through the Vale of York just days before we were due to leave, admiring the stone walls, green meadows and thick hedgerows, we nearly missed a watering hole that was different.
With Big G fully occupied besting a tanker truck, it was I who spotted ‘The Highwayman Café’. I was peering out of the dinky rental car, trying to fathom where Tadcaster used to be, because I remembered a string of cafes frequented by thirsty cyclists there. Cavernous places full of bikers, backpacks, and juke boxes playing “Let’s Walk Thisaway Not Thataway, Thisaway only leads to home …” We were on the A64 with only a ‘Little Chef ’ - if we were lucky - before we hit the new and unfamiliar A1/M1 North. We needed a break.
‘The Highwayman Café’ belied its threatening name. It looked cheerful; a renovated red-roofed cottage with matching outbuildings surrounded by flower tubs. “That looks worth a try!” I cried.
Never one to miss a meal, Big G slowed down, swung over, and slid into a convenient slot in the car park. A good omen. We jumped out, hurried past the self-serve line-up and ducked into the restaurant, fully expecting, even prepared for once, to be fleeced.
But for the first time in weeks, a drink cost less than a new cardigan - just 70p for tea and 75p for coffee - and a meal was less than a fiver. As we dug into two plates of steak pie, mushy peas and thick chips, washed down by two cups of dark, hot tea, we realized we’d finally found Highway Heaven.
Plates scraped, cups drained, we pushed back our wooden-armed chairs and drifted round the little restaurant, reading all about Dick Turpin, for whom the place was named, from the pictures and articles on the walls. It turned out that Dick was not the romantic daredevil of the old TV series, but a thug, who deceived and killed many people before being hanged in York in 1739, but who nevertheless became a legend, and, years later, inspiration for a bargain hostelry.
Returning revitalized to Manchester on the M62 a couple of days later, we roared into the ‘Welcome Break’ at Hartshead Moor. On previous trips this stop had fairly lived up to it’s name, a nice lay-by with decent refreshments and ample toilets. But this time the place was deserted. We soon saw why - tea £1.75 a cup, donuts £1.25 each.
Big G and I looked at each other and shrugged.
“Highway Robbery” we said, and marched out.
