I haven’t even finished writing about our January holiday…and I was off again on my travels. I had hopes of dry weather as I drove north on Friday… spring flowers are everywhere…snowdrops and primroses, crocus and daffodil all flowering together. There is even blossom on the trees as well as the first catkins and flowering currants… anyone would think it was spring already… apart from the incessant rain. It has barely stopped for weeks now…and it was still falling as I drove.
Sheffield, when I arrived, gleamed as the early evening lights reflected in the puddles and slates. That was not going to be allowed to put a damper on the weekend. It was still raining on Saturday… turning the roads into rivers as we headed out across a landscape half-hidden by clouds so low you could breathe them.
It was raining in Holmfirth too, where the four of us met for a late lunch. The river, usually a gentle enough affair, was roiling and rusty and the old flood maker on the wall of the Elephant and Castle a fair warning of how badly these towns built in hidden valleys can suffer when the rain rolls off the hills.
Given a certain propensity for going out in the wrong footwear…and a pair of cow-muddied boots I’d forgotten to scrape and whose laces were welded shut…I was going to buy some wellington boots. I was… but our companions arrived…and I forgot….
Which is why, a couple of hours later, I was squelching along a flooded tow path in the dark, with water swilling between my toes where it had come in over the tops of my inappropriate suede ankle boots… but although I wasn’t going to miss such a good opportunity to moan and grumble a bit…I didn’t care….
A strange creature had been sighted in Marsden…and we could hear drums…
France & Vincent 