The annual Hay-on-Ankh Regatta attracts visitors from all across the Sto Plains and crews of oarsmen race one another for the Ankh Challenge Cup and the Sto Helit Gold Medal. Sometimes in the heat of the summer this contest is interrupted as families of trolls take to the chilly waters to cool down, creating currents and whirlpools in the stream and causing the scullers to lose their oars or even capsize.
As the line of the railway takes the train away from the river the landscape reverts to cabbage fields, now interspersed with fields of grain and some livestock.
MUCH COME
•LATELY•
POPULATION: 330
CLACKS TERMINAL
ACCOMMODATION: The Snod Bonnet.
MARKET DAY: Saturday.
May Day Pole-Dance in May or Grune.
THE WELL-KEPT VILLAGE of Much Come Lately, about twenty-five miles hubwards, is the centre of a thriving hat and bonnet trade. It has a rather fine market monument in the form of an ancient carved pole, around which I’m told the village maidens dance upon the first May day without rain, even if that falls in Grune. The young women display their fitness, flexibility and strength by hanging from this pole in various postures to impress the young men of the village. There is a cream and jelly tea for all participants afterwards.
The folk of Much Come Lately still make the traditional cabbage-stalker hats which have long been employed to protect farm workers from the elements and, at the end of the day, can provide a nourishing soup.
The area between Much Come Lately and Monks Deveril is very pretty with gentle green undulations, small copses, fields of cows and hedgerows trailing streamers of Purple Bindweed and Climbing Henry in the wake of the train.
Much of this land was once part of a monastery, largely demolished by the first Lord Deveril, who was granted the land by King Veltrik III. No record remains of the monks but the water from the well is still believed, by the villagers, to cure dandruff and the palsy.
MONKS
•DEVERIL•
POPULATION: 167
CLACKS TERMINAL
ACCOMMODATION: The Deveril Arms.
MARKET DAY: Wednesday.
Soul Cake Duck garden fête in Sektober.
DEVERIL HALL IS a fine old manor house with spiral, spined bell tower and imposing façade. The gatehouse is built in the style of a Klatchian tent and was constructed after the fifth Lord Deveril had returned from that land of desert and mystery some hundred years ago. However, it is the huge hedge which is truly amazing. It would seem that the seventh Lord Deveril suffered from severe agoraphobia. He had a wild-box hedge planted that occluded the view from every one of his windows and which extended down the drive so that he could take the air without, as it were, being in it. When his son inherited the estate he employed the young dwarf gardener Modd Modossonsson to turn the hedge into something less oppressive. Given a free hand this keen young horticulturalist proceeded to create one of the growing wonders of the county, a work of unimaginable topiary depicting the whole of the battle of Koom Valley. He enlisted the help of his s
ix brothers, who by dint of using throwing axes for the tall bits had, within a few weeks, sketched out the whole concept in living hedge. The undertaking was not without its problems, the least of which was the decapitation of any number of pigeons, several dozen squirrels and two peacocks. More serious were the injuries inflicted on a junior footman. Of course, being a living plant the hedge requires constant trimming, and no sooner do they get to the far end than they have to start again at the beginning. It is a condition of entry that, if you wish to visit this remarkable achievement, you don a steel helmet, available from the gatekeeper for a modest rental.
UPPER
•FELTWHISTLE•
including Lower Feltwhistle and Middle Feltwhistle
POPULATION: 432
CLACKS TERMINAL: in Upper Feltwhistle.
ACCOMMODATION: The Pig Borer’s Tale.
MARKET DAYS: Wednesday and Friday.
Annual Pig-Rolling Race last Saturday in Ember.