Another successful weekend was enjoyed by 44 guests at Hollins Hall Hotel nr Shipley, West Yorkshire. Noreen Nichols from Warwickshire tells us all about it .......
TO WALK – OR NOT TO WALK ?
(October Weekend – Hollins Hall Country Hotel, Shipley)
First there were 12, then 10 and finally just 8 people travelled from Warwickshire in October to meet up with 30 other FWC members at Hollins Hall Hotel to enjoy the annual walking weekend. Sadly, Covid and other problems had taken their toll.
Hollins Hall Hotel is a rather lovely conference type venue with its own golf course and beautiful views over the surrounding countryside, which was quite surprising really, lying as it does just off the busy main road between Bradford and Shipley.
Shamefaced, I have to admit that we rather let the side down when it came to the walking part of the walking week-end – we didn’t. Just about everyone else did, including a lady pushed in a wheelchair. But in all fairness, I think we were up there with the best of them on the sociability scale. Second to none in chatting to friends old and new, keeping up with the best of them in eating Yorkshire traditional delights at the welcome tea party and even managing (and this just goes to show how much we really were enjoying ourselves) to raise a few jolly smiles at breakfast time.
Tempting though the walking was, there was just so much else to see and do. We visited Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Have you heard of it? Neither had I. It is a truly enormous -woollen mill and a town, built by a C19th philanthropist one Titus Salt by the rushing waters of the river Aire, hence Saltaire. The mill itself is now home to over 300 of David Hockney paintings, nearly all of them large and one of them, ‘ A Year In Normandy’ over ninety metres long. You walk round it. No wonder we hadn’t got much energy for anything else except coffee and a sit down which we duly had, not in Normandy but in the café, before exploring some of the first rate retail outlets for furniture, jewellery etc. also housed in the mill.
Another day found us in Haworth at the Parsonage, home of the Brontes, which I had always pictured as quite a dark and gloomy place but it was quite the opposite, in fact I could happily move in tomorrow. I have always loved Charlotte Bronte and now I feel we really are kindred spirits – we share the same taste in wallpaper! Busy red and white if you really want to know.
Haworth itself is delightful, high on a hill with steep cobbled streets twisting here and there in all directions but, it is a bit of a tourist hot spot. If you fancy having your fortune told or are into crystals and potions then this is the place for you but whatever else you do, please visit the pharmacy. It is of another age, all dark polished wood from floor to ceiling, counters and cupboards, and drawers and jars with mysterious names on them.
Joan Cockerell did a wonderful job of driving for Barbara, Isabel and I and we broke our journey to the North at Hardwick Hall. That, I suppose, Is another story but it is a fantastic Elizabethan gem, a NT property well worth a visit, and if tapestries are your thing, unmissable.
All in all, we had a lovely week-end and many thanks to Christine Bish and her helpers for arranging it all.
Noreen Nichols : Warwickshire FWC