Moore still

Continuing our quest for Yorkshire treasure, we have just returned from Wakefield and the Hepworth Gallery. Brilliant! As a building it knocks the new Cheltenham extension into a cocked hat. And what other British artist of the 20th Century has such a shrine in their home country, around which so much other excellence is assembled?

Earlier we visited Salts Mill, which must have one of the most extensive arts-related bookshops in the country, not to mention all those Hockneys. And the magnificent Yorkshire Sculpture Park, with its eclectic mix, the majestic Moores (today is his 116th birthday) standing out from the crowd. A heady experience.

Wolds to Airedale

Starting off uphill to Sledmere, where we didn't linger, we drove via Malton to peep at the new Stanbrook building works. After a happy chance chat with the Abbess, it was off to Coxwold, to the Pottery. Alas Peter the potter has died, so potless we moved South-West to find lunch, birdlife and other solace at Harewood. (It was Caroline's first visit.) A Henry Moore exhibition was a bonus. 

Signs of Le Grand Depart remain everywhere, not least the massed marigolds at Harewood. Having all but climbed the Cow and Calf rocks, we now overlook - from our B&B - the River Aire.

Thixendale

Few farmers have pretty gardens. Where we are tonight is an exception. We are drinking tea in considerable comfort in one of the many "rooms" of the garden of our B&B at Manor Farm, here in the Yorkshire Wolds, not a cloud in the sky. It followed on from lunch in another pretty, but smaller garden further East, at Lockington; and a wander around a third, huge garden where we stayed last night at Normanton-on-Trent. None, however, appears to be organic.

"The Plot"

Last month, I reported on a visit to the late John Bunting's Chapel, on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, above Oldstead. Returning home, I picked up "The Plot", John's daughter Madeleine's book about the Chapel and the small plot of land on which it stands.

Not many single acres of land can have had its own biography written about it! Some of it struck me as being a little uninteresting, but I did admire the author's treatment of the concept of "landscape". She quotes Trevor Rowley, "Large areas of rural England... are seen by millions and trodden on by hardly anyone at all."

This bears out a reflection I had, looking back on the 20 "Wednesday walks" I've done with others this year in various parts of Gloucestershire - never once retracing our steps. On hardly any occasion did we see other people on our path, and only rarely saw we people working the land through which we passed.