This yah neet...

Yesterday we accompanied David to the Wake in Osmotherly, stopping on the way to visit Mount Grace priory. It's a fine introduction to an evening of Yorkshire eccentricity, a Charterhouse or Carthusian monastery tucked between the hillside and the A19, a community of isolates, where each monk lived in his own little cell, studied his books and tended his walled garden, never seeing his neighbours nor even the servants who delivered his meals to the hatch by his door, L-shaped for absolute privacy. The double square of the courtyard dwarfs the little church in the centre, and there is a feeling of space and comfort which I found practically impossible to photograph. We wandered around in the soft rain, the lush grass soaking our shoes, the apple trees in pink and white bloom, and reflected that this was a last gasp of monasticism, founded at the very end of the fourteenth century, dissolved within a century and a half.

Then on to the Queen Catherine at Osmotherly, to meet with the New Lyke Wake Club. The great charm of the Club, I think, comes from the way it straddles two eccentricities. The Lyke Wake Walk is a crossing of the North York Moors between two designated points, and anyone who meets the challenge of tackling this forty mile walk in 24 hours is entitled to regard themself as a member of the Club. The challenge was set by the late Bill Cowley, in 1955, and it was he who named the walk for the old song. The Club gleefully - or rather, mournfully - endorsed the association of the walk with the soul's purgatorial journey, and with the transport of coffins over the moors for interment.

durham_rambler and I did once - with David's support and encouragement - complete a crossing, so we are technically members of the club, but we were present because we design and manage the club's web site. The Wake (the name given by the Club to its Annual General Meeting and the dinner which follows it, as well as to any other social gathering) was entirely enjoyable: how could you not enjoy an event at which members wear black (or, in one case, the white robes of a monk), open the formal proceeding by singing the Dirge, and award each other degrees such as "Doctor of Dolefulness"? But I felt like an impostor among the serious walkers. Across the table from me, someone mentioned that he had walked from Land's End to John O' Groats; his neighbour replied that so had he, and they set to discussing their respective routes.