Open Writing

Bolton Abbey is a beautiful mediaeval abbey on the River Wharfe in a most picturesque part of North Yorkshire. Although most of it is a crumbling ruin, part of its ancient nave is a living church that serves the local population. It is at its best when viewed across the River from the meadow or the shingle shore that provides a beach for holidaymakers who flock there in the summer with their picnic baskets, kites, and cricket sets, to share the beach and the meadow with a herd of blank faced inquisitive cows.

The churchyard is cropped by a flock of Jacob’s sheep whose antique horns look like the never-was of yellowed pictures in books that tell of olden days. The graves are moss covered, the inscriptions on the greyed stone hard to read. Beneath them lie the remains of local worthies of ancient time: men and women who trod the verdant pasture between the narrow lane that runs through the village to the church.

It is a place whose images slow artists commit to paper and canvas, from whence, like Wordsworth’s Daffodils, they return to remind them of its beauty, when old age claims their legs and prohibits them revisiting the scenes of so many precious memories.

Those who visit Bolton Abbey are compelled to visit again, for its timeless charm cannot be taken in in less than a lifetime, and it does not yield its secrets but slowly when already revealed mysteries have been well learned and put away deep in the heart of the confidante. This compulsion is remarkable in its persistence, as is the call to those who have not made the pilgrimage to go and marvel at its majesty, as it stands as a testimony of faith to those men and women of former years, to whom it was a miracle of devotion and adoration cast in stone.

And so it was, it is told, that young Derrick and his bride, Barbara, clad themselves in their motorcycle gabardines, donned suitable helmets and long leather gauntlets to keep out the depredations of the bitter northern winter, especially when experienced head out on a motor cycle, even from the relative comfort and shelter of one of Swift’s famous sidecars.

Having settled Barbara in the sidecar, Derek turned on the petrol tap beneath the pear shaped fuel tank and, twisting the throttle down and setting the choke shut, he kicked the engine over a couple of times before it roared into life, emitting that famous British Roar to the deep satisfaction of the motorcyclist and the discomfort of those trying to get a midday nap in nearby houses. Now astride the machine, he dipped the gear control with his foot and let out the clutch, to rip up the semi-vertical Scar Lane and head westward for Outlane, from where he would soon reach the Yorkshire border to search for the Abbey in the dark parts of Lancashire.

Motorcycling is probably the most exhilarating form of travel available to man, unless dropping from an aeroplane earthwards at terminal velocity qualifies as travel. When the engine is burring along as it should, and the sky is blue even though the day is cold, it brings to the mounted traveller a sense of well being that has to be experienced to be appreciated. With happy hearts and eager senses of anticipation of visiting a place about which everyone revels, the pair, smiling at each other occasionally, headed west, searching for road signs to show them the way in the absence of a road map. Road maps are for those uncertain of their destinations!

Those familiar with the geography of the English North Country will detect a flaw in the ambitions of this pair who, with the blithe indifference of the young and carefree, sped off in the wrong direction entirely.

Reaching the environs of Bolton in Lancashire, and pleased at the short time it seemed to have taken them, Derrick removed his helmet and fighter pilot’s goggles before accosting one of the diminutive men of that town, and asking the surprised munchkin whether this was Bolton and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, asking where the Abbey was. The munchkin’s jaw dropped so far open that it is doubtful whether it ever resumed its normal position. What could seem more normal than to expect Bolton Abbey – one of Yorkshire’s most beautiful places – to be in Bolton? It was an honest mistake and one at which, eventually, Derrick came to be able to laugh.

One thing is sure, and I know the lesson was not lost on either Derrick or Barbara, and that is that we will end up where we end up, not because we intended to get there, but because we took the road that led us there, whether it was out intended destination or not. Jesus said,

I am the way, the truth, and the life:
no man cometh unto the father but by me.

He has even supplied us with a road map!