Coast to Coasting #4: the people you meet

“Excuse me, sorry to bother you, but can I ask what you are doing?”
Or,
“So tell me about what’s going on here, if you don’t mind?”
A (hopefully) polite enquiry has been my opening for several conversations along the Coast to Coast path.
One of the attractions of walking from one side of England to the other is you meet local interesting people. British reserve might normally drive me past, but I’m only going to be walking this way once, so I figure I might as well risk being nosy to satisfy my curiosity.
A few examples….

The Co-op manager

Lynn is the hard-working and friendly manager of the Grosmont Co-operative Society store which has a long proud local tradition. The store was founded in 1867 and celebrated its 150th anniversary last year as the oldest independent co-operative store in the UK.
The society has individual members; it costs a pound a share to join (but you have to prove you have a local connection otherwise I would have bought a share on the spot along with my banana and cappuccino) and every time you make a purchase you tell Lynn your “divi number”, the receipt goes in a big sweet jar and is tallied up to pay members a dividend twice a year
“There’s a lady up the road who enters it all by hand in a big ledger,” Lynn told me.
The Co-op used to boast drapery, clothing and general goods departments but now it is a small general store where you can buy anything from glue to fix your boots to pies to own-label wine and Yorkshire vodka.

The dry stone waller

Crossing Danby High Moor, we walked along the old ironstone railway route. The heather was alive with red grouse who would soon (after 12 August) probably not be alive, based on the number of open topped wooden hides or grouse butts for sport shooting we saw. By this stage of the hike I was used to seeing Bronze Age burial mounds and unspecified tumuli all along the C2C but when I saw a man actually building what I thought was a burial mound by the side of the track I had to ask him what he was doing.
“You are the sixth Australian to ask me that today,” he responded.
Waving a hand at the carefully organised piles of stone blocks he was using to line the open-topped, heather covered 2 metre earth mound, Peter the dry stone waller explained the intricacies of building a top-class “Carlos Fandango” of a well-disguised grouse butt.
“Not one of those obvious wooden ones - grouse can spot those a mile off and veer away. The gamekeepers here are very particular.”
Cheerily agreeing to have his picture taken, Peter said, “I’d better hold a hammer to make it look like I’m busy.” Then went on using his skill and energy to improve the likely death rate of the beautiful birds that kept us company all the way into Egton Bridge.

The scyther (is that a word?)

The man from Odds and Sods Garden Maintenance, whose name I wished I’d got, was wielding a scythe in a particularly ham-fisted awkward manner in the wildflower meadow along the River Swale below Richmond, but I was glad I stopped and asked him about scything.
“It looks like I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m trying to trim down the grass between the wildflower clumps - they need a few more weeks so that they can grow their seeds,” he explained.
“Last year I cut this whole meadow by hand using my scythe - only took me a day, once you get your rhythm up.”
“I sharpen my blade myself - got a stone at home. This scythe comes from Austria, feel that,” he said, handing me the gracefully curved pale wood shaft and sweeping metre long blade to heft. It was as light as a mug of tea and as easy to hold!
Showing me the two perpendicular handles he explained how the handles are completely adjustable to fit the user’s height and comfort.
“So my son who is six foot, he can use this scythe as easy as me once it is adjusted.”
“Once you get into the swing of it, scything is about balance and motion and rhythm,” he said. “I love it because it is like a moving meditation; I would do it anyway because I love it - and I am lucky enough that Richmondshire Landscape Trust pay me spend the day doing what I love. Isn’t that fortunate ?”

Scything as a meditation