Chilling out in a boutique bolthole and a Quaker retreat

‘BRAG sweet tenor bull, descant on Rawthey’s madrigal, each pebble its part for the fells’ late spring.’ So begins Briggflatts, astonishing poem of memory and loss published in 1965, sealing the reputation of Basil Bunting, then 65 and trammelled by obscurity and penury as he was for much of his long life.

Stow House is a B&B that has all the trappings of a sophisticated bolthole

Educated among Quakers but not one, jailed as a teenage conscientious objector during the Great War, hapless habitue of the Parisian literary scene, then a war pilot and foreign correspondent in the Middle East before returning to his native Newcastle to work, bizarrely, on the business desk of the local paper, Bunting was always an outsider.

All this is charted in a recent biography, A Strong Song Tows Us, by Richard Burton. I’ve always loved the masterpiece, not the man. Briggflatts the poem is rooted in an actual place called Brigflatts (note the one g) on the river Rawthey, near Sedbergh at the head of Dentdale. Specifically the Friends Meeting House’ there.

Stow House – country comforts meet metropolitan chic

A dog-friendly hotel invitation to stay at the wonderful Stow House at Aysgarth in Wensleydale provided the perfect opportunity to visit the wellspring of the poem’s gestation, just across the border in Cumbria.

I’m wary of visiting writer’s houses, often a mausoleum of reassembled furniture and marginal memorabilia with only the dustiest hint of what made a genius tick. But Brigflatts is different. It was never Bunting’s home. He just visited friends in the village as a youth and fell for a lass called Peggy Greenbank. Nearly 50 years later he met his muse again after the poem shaped by that adolescent fling was squeezed from him.

Brigflatts; below, a cherished space and the simple burial ground 

The Meeting House is a simple, lime-washed building down a lane in a tiny hamlet. Three-and-a-quarter centuries after Quaker founder George Fox visited it is still a place of modest pilgrimage for adherents across the world. In the great  vision Fox had on Pendle Hill it is almost certainly the place where he saw “a great people in white raiment by a rivers syde comeinge to ye Lorde”.

Bunting eschewed this faith which so influenced him, but he is buried in the graveyard there and his books are available in the homely interior of the Meeting House. Whatever, whoever you worship, go there and share the unearthly sense of calm. Then perhaps take tea in and explore Sedbergh, self-proclaimed book town. For this inveterate browser its various second hand bookshops are less interesting than in fellow book towns, Wigtown in Scotland and, definitely, Hay on Wye, but man cannot live by Kindles alone.

Dentdale's own viaduct mirroring the more famous Ribblehead below (with chihuahua) 

The best approach to Sedbergh is from the south via Dentdale, through one of Britain’s most arresting landscapes, perhaps stopping off in Dent village – home to two excellent pubs, The Sun and the George and Dragon, tap for the Dent brewery. 

We’d journeyed up from Manchester via Settle, stopping off at one of the UK’s best cheese shops, Courtyard Dairy  and neighbouring artisan wine specialists Buon Vino, both based in the bijou Courtyard complex off the A65. That was our picnic sorted, which we ate gazing across at the awesome Ribblehead Viaduct carrying the Leeds-Settle rail line. All it needed was a steam train to rattle across to recreate Guardian photographer Denis Thorpe’s iconic image.

Courtyard Dairy – as good as it gets for cheese buying

This is great fell walking country – witness Captain Smidge the chihuahua ready for the off – but Penyghent and Ingleborough would have to wait. We wanted to reach Aysgarth Falls before midge time and catch cocktail hour at our base, nearby Stow House.

We managed both. We had the spectacular falls to ourselves and then a couple of pre-dinner Negronis perfectly mixed by our host Sarah Bucknall in a B&B that has that has all the trappings of a sophisticated bolthole. 

Our room; below, the badger and the breakfast room 

Which was the plan when last year Sarah and her husband Phil decamped from high-profile advertising jobs in London and bought this 1876 rectory on the edge of Aysgarth village. It had become an old school B&B – now it is definitely new school. Quirky new school. We fancied staying in No 6, ‘Badger’, with its mounted badger head in a gas mask, but that was one of two non dog-friendly rooms

Still we were ludicrously comfortable in Shotgun Clare, named after a print behind the bed and boasting a freestanding roll top bath, epitome of rustic chic appeal. This and the louche settee coverings are of a piece with the objets d’art dotted around, such as the papier mache hare in the bar and, in the sitting room, images by the works by the fashion photographer Bob Carlos Clarke.

Aysgarth Falls Hotel; below, the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls

Stow House doesn’t do meals apart from splendid breakfasts, so we walked all of a hundred yards to the Aysgarth Falls Hotel, eating in the bar because Smidge was with us. One lovely, affordable bottle of Rhone Villages and a selection of local game later (pigeon, grouse and venison – much enjoyed by the good Captain, too) we departed after a terrific meal that surprised us in quality and price. My whole grouse with all the trimmings cost just £22.

Next morning after Smidge romped on the ample lawns with the Bucknall’s brown labradort Fletcher, we rambled alongside the River Ure to Aysgarth Lower Falls, on the bank opposite all the National Park regimentation, skimming stones and trying to get the little dog to pose for the ‘dollar shot” as we call in the dog-friendly travel writing game. 

St Andrew Aysgarth; below, the impressive rood screen

Before leaving we strayed into St Andrew’s church with its vast four acre graveyard and fittings salvaged from Jervaulx Abbey during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, notably a striking rood screen. Outside, as at Stow House, the views in all directions are stunning. Wensleydale may be the sedatest of the Dales, but its charms are manifest.

What to do in the area:

Jervaulx, along with Rievaulx and Fountains Abbeys, is within easy reach, as is 600-year-old Bolton Castle (below), still in the private ownership of Lord Bolton, the direct descendant of the castle’s original owner Sir Richard le Scrope. 

We dropped by en route over the high grouse moors into Swaledale. Our road took us to Grinton and the Bridge pub, a dog-friendly old favourite with good Sunday roasts and cask ale. Next door is another St Andrew’s Church, dating back to the 12th century and known as the 'Cathedral of the Dale'. 

Up the dale you’ll find Thwaite, Muker and Keld, handsome villages in a pastoral idyll. In the other direction you hit gorgeously Georgian Richmond, dominated by its hulking medieval castle above the River Swale, in full spate when we were there.

In Wensleydale the big draw is the eponymous cheese, production centred on the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes, tourist capital of the dale.For an overview of the area visit the Dales Countryside Museum. Hardraw Force, England’s largest single drop waterfall, is a couple of miles to the north.

Ten miles eat of Aysgarth you’ll find Middleham, where you can explore a modern and mysterious labyrinth called The Forbidden Corner, a four acre garden full of follies, including secret underground chambers.

Wensleydale sheep – an historic and rare breed