June 1 marked the first time since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic that the United Kingdom registered no deaths.
That zero balance did not last 24 hours, but we will see it come back again, even as transmissions edge up. Daily deaths are in very low numbers.
The hope is that with more than 75% of the British population now having had at least one vaccination and 50% having both, herd immunity will form.
Travel restrictions remain in place for most international destinations, and on June 4 came news that Portugal has been shunted back to an “amber” designation, with that going into force on June 8, which is just enough time for families on half-term break to scuttle back without the need for quarantine.
Domestic tourism will remain the winner, if that is the right word, which I am sure it is not, and last weekend, our late May bank holiday weekend, I walked through the door of my first hotel since January 2020.
Nine years ago, my wife Francesca and I came across a dear little inn near Sedbergh, Cumbria, called the Cross Keys Temperance Inn. We had dinner there, and we said we would return one day to stay in one of its two rooms.
This month we did just that, and any health concerns were put to one side when we realized that for three days of our four we would be the only guests and that due to self-imposed restrictions by the innkeepers, dining would be restricted to overnight guests — that is, us.
The inn is a jewel. Set within the Howgill Fells hills, facing the impressive waterfall of Cautley Spout, we were entertained by gorgeous views, the babbling River Rawthey, swooping swallows, chattering hens and guinea fowl and for all four days the serenade of a cuckoo, which was being mobbed by small birds that instinctively know of its behavior of laying its eggs in the nests of other species.
The inn serves no alcohol, a decision that dates back to 1902 when the owner dived into the river to save a drunken man and lost his life. Guests can bring their own, and the restaurant of no more than 10 or so tables is quite celebrated and booked some way in advance, although the pandemic has altered its opening hours.
Lamb is the local specialty, and the steak-and-ale pies are popular.
Just along the road, if you turn right off it and right again is the very quiet Uldale, “dale” meaning valley, one of the many words in this area that have Scandinavian origins. “Howgill” also comes from the languages of the north, meaning hills along a narrow river.
We also met the owner of Uldale House, which is a farm. He and his family had bought the property a few months ago, their first winter being the most severe in a decade.
He said the property had come on the market for the first time in a century, and it is his two sons who will run the farm, a very encouraging sign, for what we generally hear is that younger generations have no interest in farming.
Looking at all in the sunshine of late May no doubt gives a false impression of an Elysian Field. Working a fells farm, sheep farming mostly, so it seems, is a tough life, but likely a calm and satisfying one.
The couple who run the Cross Keys, Alan and Chris Clowes, are Quakers and epitomize calm. They are very much responsible for the peace, tranquility and welcome that emanates.
This is all in the part of Cumbria on the other side of the M6 freeway from the Lake District, which can get very busy, especially in the first holiday weekend of wonderful sunshine and when everyone is eager to put months of restrictions behind them.
That all seemed a world away as we chatted to Alan and Chris Clowes. They have had a fascinating life, including walking from Jerusalem to Damascus and setting up a charity called the Thandi Friends Project just south of Cape Town that teaches skills and management to those who are impoverished, some of whom are HIV positive. It is a project helped by many in the area surrounding Sedbergh, the closest town to the Cross Keys.
They had just returned from having lived there for a number of years, all the while still running the inn.
The inside of the inn is calm, the house’s thick walls dating to 1732. It looks like the sitting room of your grandmother, which is an excellent notion. You'll find framed maps of Westmoreland, a county that is no more, swallowed by Cumbria; another frame covering a poem about the inn written in the Victorian age, a grandfather clock, pewter and heavy looking chairs. You'll even find a cat called Kat — says Chris — or Mogg — says Alan — that wanders around at will, which it has done so since sauntering in one day four years ago.
I did not feel like leaving either.
Feel free to contact me at tbaker@hotelnewsnow.com. Find me on Twitter at @terencebakerhnn and on LinkedIn.
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