People and places – livingmylifefindingmeaning

People and places

October 8 2024

At home on the hills … Settle, N. Yorks

Hills have always grounded me; they are where I’m most free, most contented, most me.

My sister and I were used to climbing them from a young age.

My first memories of hill walking are with Dad. The only aspect diminishing my enjoyment was the fact that Mum could never accompany us. Even then, in her 30s, her health issues meant that she couldn’t manage hills, but she always encouraged us to go. I see her now, standing there with a smile on her face, stoically waving us off. I’ve often thought how she would have loved to join us – Mum has always loved nature and walking – but she never ever showed the disappointment or even sadness she must have felt.

It doesn’t matter where I’ve been, as soon as the train reaches Settle, and the hills rise to greet me, a sense of well-being and ease wash over me. This is the place where the journey began all those years ago! This landscape runs through me; its ruggedness and elemental beauty sustain me. I carry it with me always; it is surety when all around me lie shifting sands.

And since my return, I’ve spent many a happy evening after work revelling in the landscape.

‘In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place

Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.’

Ted Hughes

So, if you do ever visit Settle, let me share my favourite walk:

Starting point: Greenfoot carpark. Exit the carpark with the rugby field to your right, then turn left onto Ingfield Lane, and take the first turning on your right onto Watery Lane (apparently called Brockhole Lane on the map). At the top of the lane are allotments to your left.

The lane really is watery, often impassable, although I’m very rarely defeated, using jutting areas of wall as stepping stones.

After passing the stream, look out for a stile minutes later to your left. Cross over it into the field and climb uphill, following the path, worn by decades of walking boots!

Watch out for the cows, especially if you have a dog. My sister and I were quite recently chased by rather a temperamental one, my sister only just scaling the wall before its head came into contact with said wall … rather than her, thank goodness!

At the top of the hill, walk towards the dry-stone wall and over the stile. Cross the field, following the path. Climb over another stile and walk across the next field. On reaching a stile with a little gate, clamber through and turn right, walking along a wall with a tree-lined path.

Ahead of you is a dwelling. Go through the gate and walk along the lane adjacent to its garden.

Coming to another gate, turn left up a slight incline which leads into a wooded area.

Keep walking along the lane until you come to a road which leads to Long Preston Moor on the right and Settle to the left.

Turn left and follow the road down into Settle …

Longer route:

Instead of continuing down into Settle, turn right at the signpost.

Follow the path all the way to the Malham road.

Once on the road, turn right and cross it, taking the first turning up the lane to the left. Straight ahead of you is a stile into fields. Clamber over and follow the path.

To the left here is High Hill. Climb it if you are feeling energetic. I’ve done so many a time. I remember one especially cold Christmas, where sun on snow created a bejewelled carpet and the air was ice cold and the landscape was magical when we reached the top.

Alternatively, just continue along the path, through the gate and continue straight ahead towards Warrendale Knots.

Go through the next gate and turn right if you want to visit Victoria Cave.

Otherwise, do what I usually do and turn left, following the path all the way down into the town again.

Once in Settle, treat yourself to a coffee and a snack at the Folly, Car and Kitchen or the Naked Man.

The Golden Lion is a particular favourite of mine, especially if I fancy something a little stronger.

Relax and enjoy, wherever you land!

June 24 2024

Brahms’ House Baden-Baden

Karen People and places 0

Pausing momentarily, I looked up at the white house perched on the rock above me. I had only landed here because the Frieder Burda Museum was closed, it being a Monday. But already, before entering, I knew that this was where I was meant to be on that fine, still day in March in Baden-Baden, back in 2017.

I crossed the road and opened the gate, taking the steps up to the wooden building two at a time.

The notice outside the door read ‘please ring the bell’ so I did and, stepping back, waited. I could hear an echo somewhere inside and then footsteps on the stairs and the turning of a key.

A friendly woman opened the door to me.

‘Grüß Gott’, I said

She responded similarly, adding ‘Engländerin?’

It’s always apparent.

I followed her up the stairs into the little house.

She continued to speak to me in German, which I’ve always liked.

‘Do you know anything about Brahms?’ she asked.

I responded in the negative.

She told me that the house was Brahms’ summer home from 1865 to 1874, and that he spent time there to be near his dear friend, Clara Schumann.

Inside were a piano and work desk in one room, a bed in the other

The curator kindly opened the bedroom window for me, to get a better sense of what Brahms looked out over every morning.

There is a timeless quality about places like that, somehow imbued with the spirit of their former inhabitants. What had Brahms been thinking as he flung open the window and greeted a new day on those summer mornings? Was it frustration at a composition half-finished which wasn’t quite to his liking, or elation at a passage completed over which he had laboured long and hard? Was it something more than achievement: the delight of seeing a very dear friend again, plans already forming as to what the two of them would do that day?

I knew nothing of Brahms, nothing of Clara, nothing of classical music, but I was hooked. Their friendship was enough to entice me in.

So, I lingered there, soaking up the atmosphere, wondering, as dreamers do, about the lives of those two, marvelling at the magic of a morning meant originally for other things.

And the special feeling
associated with my trip
never went away. I returned
home with a poster of Brahms
in his youth, given to me
because it had been produced
to advertise his concerts and wasn’t
for sale.

On discovering more about how Johannes Brahms met Clara and Robert Schumann, I was drawn into the world of that 20-year-old with the sensitive face and piercing eyes. His deep regard for them both is palpable, as is theirs for him.

I admire the young Brahms’ support of the Schumanns, especially after the failed suicide attempt, which saw Robert ending his days in an asylum, and I admire how he was there for Clara and her children.

I understand, too, Brahms’ idealism, how he could fall in love with Clara, this talented genius, fourteen years his senior.

It is frequently assumed that he was the one who finally broke free of any romantic attachment. After all, this is the man who later lived according to the tenet ‘free but lonely’.

But perhaps Brahms was always a dear friend as far as Clara was concerned, nothing more. Perhaps pursuing her art to support her children was Clara’s all-consuming passion after Robert’s death. Perhaps she no longer wanted the constraints of a 19th century husband. I don’t know; I need to read more, and even then, I will never know for sure.

For all that is written about the older Brahms and his caustic character, it is the idealist in him which remains with me, and it his enduring friendship with a woman I have come to deeply admire which fuels my imagination.

The sentiments of the following passage from a letter, which Brahms wrote to Clara on Easter Monday, 1872, resonate so entirely:

‘My beloved Clara,

I always spend festivals by myself, quietly in my room, with a few dear ones, as my family are either dead or far away. How good it does me, then, when I feel with delight how love fills my heart.

I am obviously dependent upon the world outside, the chaos in which we live. I don’t join in the laughter; I don’t join in the lies, but it is as though I can lock the best of myself away, and that only half of me goes forth, dreaming.’