Closely following the beautiful Tweed road, which for the greater part of the distance to Coldstream keeps in full view of the river, we re-cross the border quite early on the following morning.
[XIV]
MORE YORKSHIRE WANDERINGS
Flodden Field lies adjacent to the road which we pursued southward from the Tweed, but there is little now to indicate the location of the historic battlefield. Song and story have done much to immortalize a conflict whose results were not especially important or far-reaching—the world knows of it chiefly through the vivid lines of “Marmion.” It is not worth while to follow our hasty flight to the south; we are again bound for the Yorkshire moors and the distance we must cover ere night will not admit of loitering.
At Chillingham Castle we see the herd of native wild cattle made famous by Landseer’s picture. The keeper led us into the park within a hundred yards of a group of animals, which have become so tame that they took no notice of our presence. The cattle are white, with long curving horns and black muzzles, and the purity of the stock is carefully maintained. The herd is believed to be a direct descendant of the wild ox of Europe, the progenitor of our domestic cattle, and its preservation is quite analogous to the few remaining buffaloes in America. The animals retain many peculiarities of their wild state; one of the most remarkable of these is the habit which the young calves have of dropping suddenly to the ground when surprised. The bulls are often dangerous and it is related that King Edward, when Prince of Wales, killed one of the animals, arresting with a well-aimed shot its savage charge toward him. Evidently the present prince did not care to repeat his father’s experience, for he had been at Chillingham a few days before and declined the opportunity offered him by the Earl of Tankerville of slaying the king of the herd.
“’E said ’e ’adn’t time,” explained the keeper with an air of disgust that showed he looked on the prince’s excuse as a mere subterfuge.
On a former occasion we had failed to gain admittance to Alnwick Castle, owing to a visit of the king the previous day. We were more successful this time and were conducted through the portions usually shown to visitors, chiefly the remaining parts of the old fortress—the “castle good” that in early days “threatened Scotland’s wastes.” The home of the warlike Percys for many generations, few castles in England have figured more in ballad and story and few have been the center of more stirring scenes. But the old castle is almost lost in the palace of today, upon which the late Duke of Northumberland is said to have expended the enormous sum of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling. The walls at present enclose an area of five acres and it would be hard to imagine more pleasing vistas of forest and meadowland than those which greet one from the battlements. The great park is worthy of the castle, and taken altogether there is perhaps no finer feudal estate in England.
From Alnwick to Newcastle and from Newcastle to Darlington the road is familiar; only an occasional town or village interferes with our flight to the southward. Newcastle, with its bad approaches and crowded, slippery streets, causes the greatest loss of time, but we make it up on the broad, level stretch of the Great North Road to Darlington. At Richmond we leave the lowlands and strike directly across the rough moorland road to Leyburn in Wensleydale.
Here in the remote Yorkshire hills is one of the most romantic bits of England and within a comparatively small space is much of historic interest. Shall we go to Bolton Castle, which we see off yonder, grim and almost forbidding in the falling twilight? Its jagged towers and broken battlements are outlined darkly against the distant hills; indeed, in the dim light it seems almost a part of the hills themselves. We follow the rough narrow road that dwindles almost to a footpath as it approaches the village. Our car splashes through a rapid, unbridged little river, climbs the steep bank, creeps through tangled thickets, until it emerges into the main street of Castle Bolton, if a wide grass-grown road with a few lichen-covered cottages on either side may be dignified with the name. At the end of the street, towering over the slate-roofed hovels about it, is the castle, its walls in fairly good repair and three of its four original towers still standing. The fourth crumbled and collapsed from the battering Cromwell gave it—for even this remote fortress in the moors did not escape the vengeance of the Protector.