My editor phoned me up a few weeks ago and told me he wanted me to write a holiday piece for the summer. “Great”, I thought. “I wonder where I’ll be going; New York, Tokyo, Milan, St. Petersburg…”
“A little town called Haltwhistle in Northumbria” he said. “You’ll be staying in Featherstone Castle for a night. It’s sort of like a youth hostel type situation.”
Now apparently a youth hostel is a place where teenagers go on holiday if, for some reason, their parents can’t afford to send them to the nearest Hilton. When you’re there you cook and clean and do all the shit that you’d ordinarily pay people to do at home in Kensington. I had never heard of such a strange ‘holiday’ but seeing as I’m on the payroll, I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Naturally I phoned my friend Big Dan and asked him to come with me, (he’d been involved in a pretty grim altercation in a bar called the Greyhound a few nights prior and we decided it was probably best if he kept a low profile around West London for the time being). So we set off together early that Friday morning and after a pretty long drive up the M1 to Hexham, across the A69 and along some minor back roads, we found the place.
It really was a castle, standing alone in green and hilly landscape, and appearing greyish brown against the clear blue sky. The only other landmark in the visible distance was a small wooden bridge on the horizon which crossed a river into an area of hilly woodland.
The thing that really struck me about the countryside was the lack of cash points. I needed money and I had no idea where to get it from. We asked a group of ramblers who were standing in the courtyard of the castle whether they had any idea where we could get some cash and they told us to head towards Haltwhistle. We got back in the car but a man exhibiting a large beard protested.
“Why don’t you forget the car and come with us?” he said. “We’re heading that way and the walk would do you fellows some good.”
At first I was reluctant, but I had a job to do; walking seemed to be very important to these people, so we agreed and soldiered on towards Haltwhistle. Big Dan had never been out of Central London, and found the whole thing extremely confusing. Prior to our trip he thought Hyde Park was the countryside. At one point we encountered a cow. Having never seen a real one, Big Dan was most perplexed. From the look on his face I inferred that a combination of children’s television and shoddy advertisements had deluded him into expecting a cow to walk on its hind legs and sing catchy milk related jingles. I could see the experience was very upsetting for Big Dan so I took him to one side and gently whistled the theme from the laughing cow adverts into his ear. He was suitably settled.
The walk was all at once tiring and invigorating. I could feel my chest cavity opening and my nasal passages expanding. The mild gusts of manure being blown in by the breeze as we crossed the fields weren’t nearly as unpleasant as I would have predicted. I had no signal on my mobile phone, which was a little disconcerting, but this soon became a strong feeling of emancipation; I wasn’t expecting a call, nor did I need to make one.
We walked for around three quarters of an hour before arriving in Haltwhistle. The signpost read “Welcome to Haltwhistle: The Centre of Britain”. This claim made me sceptical but I suspended my disbelief for long enough to enjoy the quaint back alley we found ourselves wandering along. I popped my head into a little green grocers shop and shouted to the cashier.
“Excuse me, could you tell me the way to the town centre?”
The old man behind the cash register, looked at me confusedly for a few seconds before giving a laughter-filled response.
“The town centre mate? You’re in it!”
At that point London could have been a million miles away. I got my bearings and we bid farewell to the ramblers, (who it seemed regarded Haltwhistle as the starting point of their days walk.) I sent Big Dan into the local newsagents to buy some cigarettes and if possible a couple of bottles of red wine. While he did that I scoped out the rest of the so called ‘town’.
At first I thought there must be a doppelganger of myself residing in rural Northumberland. Every person I walked past seemed to say hello to me and smile. It was only after a few minutes it occurred to me that these people were just being friendly. I was clearly a stranger in their town and rather than treat me like an intruder, they were greeting me like they would a friend who’d come to visit. I soon got into the swing of things, but probably took it a bit too far when I tried to ‘high-five’ an 80 year old woman walking with a stick.
I apologised, helped her to her feet and quickly shot into what turned out to be a ‘railway café and bookshop’. The place was empty at first, and I found myself drawn to a table which had a map of Northumberland imprinted onto it. The shopkeeper strolled back in after having left his establishment completely empty for at least 5 minutes and said something along the lines of “I bet you thought you’d found the Marie Celeste”.
We exchanged pleasantries and he gave me a map of “the best walk in the region”. I tired to pay him, but he insisted that it was a gift. He told me to enjoy my stay and I smiled and made my way back towards the newsagents.
When I got there I saw Big Dan crouching in the corner waving a French loaf and shouting angrily at the shopkeeper. It turns out that upon being asked if he’d tasted the real ale at the Fox and Firkin, Big Dan had misunderstood the local accent and presumed he was under attack.
Thankfully my father owned Sunderland AFC during their 1970s F.A. Cup Glory era, and as a result I can speak fluently in a North East accent. I translated what was being said, and Big Dan made his apologies and left. I gave my best apology to the traumatised shopkeeper, who was extremely tolerant and understanding of Big Dan’s appalling behaviour. I bought the fags and booze and Big Dan and I set off on our walk back to the castle.
Our walk back was punctuated with ‘rests’ in which we drank wine and talked about the events of the day. Prior to that morning Big Dan had no idea that Cows were actually used to produce meat, and the fact made him feel somewhat uneasy. He described his discussion with the local butcher repeatedly.
“They kill them and cook them” he kept saying.
I have to confess that much of the rest of that night was a blur, including the actual castle itself. I seem to remember an AGA, an open fire indoors around which young people were sat singing, and a bed room in which one had to make ones own bed. Thankfully I was so paralytic that the ordeal escaped me. I don’t remember sleeping much and I certainly don’t know why my bed was covered in leaves.
I woke up feeling a little off, and as a result I could not quite gauge just how little sleep I had gotten. Big Dan had quite kindly left me a cup of coffee by my bed with a note reading “this will make it better, mate”.
I drank it, and assumed that the tanginess was just a bi-product of my hangover breath. As I sat in the dormitory drinking my coffee and looking out of the window at acres of green land, trees and wildlife I felt quite overwhelmed. I felt welcome here. I felt immense gratitude to the people of Haltwhistle who had done nothing but help us all of yesterday. I felt guilty that I did not live my life by the same high standards. Where I live there is no sense of community, I do not even know, let alone trust my neighbours. An empty shop in London is an open invitation to robbery. In Haltwhistle a crime against one person is a crime against everyone. All these feelings were building up inside of me at once. It all became too much and I had to get out.
I stormed out of the main entrance, through the courtyard and over a fence. The scenery was a green and blue blur and my eyes were welling with the force of the wind on my face. I crossed a rickety bridge and began to climb the steep, wooded incline ahead of me. As I reached the peak I took the biggest, deepest breath of my whole life and continued on my way. With every step I felt cleansed; every breath was a new lease of life. Things were going to be so much better now. I walked until I couldn’t walk any longer, where, in the centre of a forest I collapsed in a heap on the floor. I lay there for maybe an hour, watching the white clouds float across the blue sky through the cracks in the green leaves over head.
Now maybe it was a lack of sleep, or maybe it was the gram of mescaline that Big Dan had slipped into my coffee that morning, but suddenly there appeared to be 10 or 11 zombies staggering towards me from deep within the forest. I was ripped from my personal Nirvana and in a panicked frenzy I screamed and legged-it face first into a tree. Some time passed before I eventually realised that it was not zombies seeking to eat my brains, but a friendly posse of ramblers who had accidentally happened upon my woodland den. It was, in fact, that very same posse who had been so kind to Big Dan and I a day prior.
They could see that all was not well and helped me to my feet. We made our way back to the castle and chatted about a variety of things, ranging from bird-spotting to the ‘Oyster Card™’ system of the London underground. We arrived to find Big Dan in quite a state. He had taken himself on a walk through the surrounding area and had enjoyed himself so much that he was desperate to pay someone for the experience he’d had.
“Surely this can’t be free, it was at least as fun as the Oblivion at Alton Towers if not more so!”
I explained to him that not every human action needs to culminate in a cash transaction, and that things were different here. He just couldn’t grasp the concept so I eventually just told him that Saturdays were free. It will take him a while to truly understand what it means to experience joy without the need for a receipt, but I’m sure he’s taken a big step in the right direction.
We collected our things and got back in the car. I wanted to stay, but the longer I stayed I knew the harder it would get to leave. I was also very aware of Big Dan’s growing confusion and felt it necessary to get him back to Marble Arch, where things were polluted and familiar. Off we went, waving goodbye to Northumberland, and all that goes with it. I’ll never forget it.
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