We had left Chop Yat early in the morning after a
night of excessive heat in beds of excessive featheriness and were walking
towards Helmsley by way of Rievaulx, all unconcerned as to lunch by the
way, because the ordnance map marked with such cordial legibility an inn on
the road at a reasonable distance. Moreover, was not Yorkshire made up of
hospitable ridings, and had we not, on the previous day, found lunch in
this cottage and tea in that, with no trouble at all, to say nothing of the
terrific spread confronting us at Chop Yat? Why then carry anything?
But we soon began to regret the absence of sustenance, for this kind of
weather makes for extreme lassitude shot through with rattiness, and under
its influence nourishment dies in one with painful celerity.
The blessed word "inn" was however on the ordnance map, and since it was
the one-inch scale that cannot lie we braced ourselves, mended and remended
our tempers, and plodded on. The dales no doubt are gorgeous places, but
under this grey humid sky anyone who wanted it could have had my share of
Billsdale (as I believe it was).
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