The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

Working for almost two evenings a week and pretending to look after apple trees can take it out of a soul so recently I decided to get away from it all. I booked a week in a reasonably priced cottage and set off for a holiday on Holy Island. There was a bit more planning than that, largely because of the need to co-ordinate getting out of the Lincolnshire Wolds and up to the Scottish border before the tide wiped out the island causeway, leaving me stranded on the mainland.

The weather has been grim for what seems like months and the forecasts I check during my journey north aren’t getting my hopes up but it turns out to be not too bad for the most part. Certainly not as bad as it was the last time I came. The holiday passes for the most part as you’d imagine. I walk from the cottage either to the birdwatcher’s hide or to the white pyramidal monolith on the far side of the island. I sup ale in the three pubs and eat breakfast in all the cafes. I do all this whilst the back of my mind worries about how it’s going to help me write my fifth blog post in five weeks. Productivity records are in jeopardy. I can’t expect my readers to put up with another thousand words of nothing. Come on Northumberland, you wild, raw beauty; give me something to get my creative juices flowing.

Northumberland ignores my cry and I begin to consider making something up. Perhaps I could pretend to notice some apple trees as I scan the horizon with my binoculars and end up racing the incoming tide towards them. That would be a lot more interesting than my usual escapades and I quickly realise no-one would fall for it. Instead, I decide to take a trip to Berwick on the twice weekly bus service and have a look round. If that doesn’t yield results, I’ll miss a week and let down my readership. It’s no big deal; I’ll just buy her lunch next week to make up for it.

The Number 477 bus sets off from the car park near the public toilets, passes Haggerston Castle and arrives in Berwick at about half one. The route was once included in the Guardian newspaper’s twenty best bus routes in Britain but it doesn’t do much for me. I’d rather get the Louth to Lincoln service and spend an hour watching the Wolds go by. 

Berwick sprawls across the mouth of the River Tweed with two stone bridges and a viaduct to keep its two riverfronts in union. The river, and I mean no offence by this, is a big, dirty grey thing with oozing mudflats littered with debris and fallen trees. Anywhere this close to the North Sea rightly belongs to seagulls and there are enough around to raucously remind you of that fact. All your chips are theirs by right so don’t try fending them off when they swoop. I like it though. Forbidding grey rivers seem like home to me and the squawking birds are more like music than most of the stuff I listen to.

I haven’t been back here since my first trip to Holy Island a couple of years ago. If that makes me seem like a regular pilgrim it shouldn’t. I’ve been here twice. I don’t recall being very impressed with the place back then though; I remember killing time drifting between a Caffe Nero, a Costa and a WHSmith that has now closed. It was much of a muchness with any mid sized northern town. Nice but nothing special.

This time, however, after I get off the bus and turn into the high street, something has changed. The town hall thing at the bottom of the nearly pedestrianised bit still looks abandoned and there are still the same chainstore coffee shops, but this time there are a couple of new outlets. A lovely book shop catches my eye and nearby there’s an artisanal home furnishings place, enough to make you suspect some hipsters have moved in from Edinburgh. The Wetherspoons has gone too, reimagined as a local pub with the same variety of beer, same cut price meals and same decor but now with extra television screens showing the horse racing.

I wander about a bit after buying some books I didn’t know I needed from the Book Loft and find a street with even more bohemian retailers; artisan cafes, second hand bookshops without any discernible fiction sections and eco-knitwear stores. Nothing to attract a fat waster like me, but plenty to make me crack a smile and enjoy my meandering. 

Even after buying groceries in Asda I’ve still got three more hours before the first, last and only bus back to my lodgings and window shopping is only going to get me so far. My only remaining hope is a nondescript side street next to the British Heart Foundation superstore but I can’t see much going on apart from a closed chippy and maybe another view of the river. Despite that, I decide to give it a go and take a right, heading, unusually for me, away from Greggs. Maybe this is what it feels like to grow up.

Suddenly, quiet descends. Maybe it’s the shelter offered by a narrow street with tall buildings on either side or maybe it’s something more cosmic than that. The beauty salon tries half-heartedly to draw me in but next to it I glimpse a brightly painted wooden sign and a window display full of bottles. My first thought is that it’s nothing more than an aspirational off licence but I spy the word Orchard and suddenly I’m hooked.

Led by powers either magical or mundane, I’ve stumbled upon the Orchard on West Street; a boutique outlet for locally pressed craft cider and other, less-interesting, fruit-based drinks. Wine, blackberry cider, orange juice; that sort of thing. Nice enough for those that indulge but not tempting enough to lure me away from God’s favourite fruit.

Inside, there are bottles arranged in boxes brightly labelled with pomological scenes; at least four different types of cider (try before you buy? Don’t mind if I do.), pressed apple juice that’s either pure or mixed with other fruit and a small range of posh-looking cheese. Centuries of tradition can’t be wrong; cheese and cider belong together like chips and gravy.

The lady behind the counter is lovely and patiently listens to me banging on about my fifteen bottles of Lincolnshire cider laid down for the summer whilst pouring me samples and offering me a chunk of mango chutney flavoured Red Leicester. It tastes a lot better than it sounds.

“Ooh, this is great,” I say. “I bet mine will taste like vinegar.”

“It’ll be lovely,” she says, even though she can’t possibly know for sure.

She’s convincing though and I can feel my hopes rising. Inside these four walls, everything is well with the world. My Ticklepenny cider will be a triumph and other people will be able to drink it without immediately removing me from their Christmas Card list.

We chat on, even though a trio of young folk wander into the shop and start looking around. “Ignore them,” she says. “They won’t buy anything.”

It seems harsh but then I realise that she’s joking and the newcomers are either friends or family. Of course they are, the Orchard on West Street lady would never say anything rotten. She spreads only good cheer. And takes your money in return for expensive booze.

After I’ve told her about my orchard back in the Wolds, she tells me a story. The boss (who may or may not be her husband) retired from the Royal Air Force a few years ago and was determined to set up a cider brewery even though every expert told him that you can’t make cider in Northumberland. Between the two of them they bought an old chapel, converted it into a home and surrounded it with the best apple trees they could find. Now, only a handful of years later (or maybe more: I’ve not done the research), they’ve won awards, have their own shop and live near a castle. What a life.

I check the Old Chapel Cidery website after I leave with a clutch of likely bottles, alcoholic and otherwise, and realise that what’s just happened is very much the orchard equivalent of a self-published writer mithering Stephen King when they bump into him on the streets of Bangor. The Old Chapel Cidery is a sprawling affair, endless rows of trees in massive fields that almost definitely don’t contain a non-navigable canal and a bridge made out of an old corrugated iron pipe. My efforts are laughable in comparison.

I pause briefly, flummoxed by rising cynicism and convinced I’ve just been had by a smooth talking salesperson. But no, that’s not what happened. I made a connection with someone who followed their apple dream a few years before me and wanted to offer some encouragement to a fellow traveller. This day has been good. Wonderful even. And all because I might slowly be losing my obsession with Greggs pasties.