The Moon's Our Nearest Neighbour by Ghillie Basan (2001)

 

Ghillie and Jonathan Basan have always longed to live in a remote spot. For two years they have been looking for a small cottage with some land and outbuildings. By chance, a friend spots an ad in Exchange and Mart and they set off to view Corrunich Cottage, in the Eastern Highlands.  

'The track seemed to go on and on, over pot-holes and through snow-drifts along the side of a dense plantation of spruce.' 'To our eyes it looked enchanting. Set in open moorland, 1,500 feet above sea level, with hills rising steeply behind it, it was indeed remote.' At last they have found what they were looking for. The cottage has no central heating, no mains electricity and no phone. By selling their Edinburgh flat they can buy it outright and live off the proceeds for a year. In the long term they plan to organize photography workshops in the converted outbuildings.

The book consists of a series of very short 'chapters', observations, of a few pages, concerning: The Move, Settling in, and Making a Living.

Slowly they settle in to the cottage and get to know their neighbours. They are surrounded by sheep, lambs and ponies (including a wild stallion) who eat their washing. They get used to struggling with the generator and doing without electricity from time to time. Ghillie is an experienced cook who is used to working in primitive surroundings with basic equipment.

'Indeed, the life that first winter was fairly idyllic. Simple and solitary. Time to think and reflect.' Although: 'There was the continual fixing and filling of the generator, digging the car out of the snow, walking up and down the track for mail and supplies ...' Much later in the book, Ghillie observes: 'And it is staggering how time-consuming just living can be. There's the walking out to fetch supplies, the wood to chop and ailing machines to fix. There are gas tubes to drag up and down and vehicles to drag out of snow. There's no end to the chores (...) We can't just call in a plumber, electrician or mechanic, as no one would come.'

Their plan to organize photography workshops does not convince the man from the Enterprise Board ('The way I see it is to open the barn to bus parties and to offer tea and cakes'), so they will have to think of other ways to make a living. So Jonathan starts working in Edinburgh a few days a week and does freelance photography work.  They also decide to revive a cookbook typescript, Classic Turkish Cookery, which has already been rejected by many publishers. But it is not easy keeping in touch with publishers and employers when you live up a track, with no phone or fax! In the end the book is published and it is even nominated for an important award. 

I found this book a very entertaining and easy read, perfect bedtime reading in fact, apart from the descriptions of the delivery of Ghillie's babies. She had the hardest time, with both her daughter (Yasmin) and her son (Zeki), and I found myself gripping my e-reader *) and wanting to close my eyes. Poor woman. But fortunately in both cases she takes home a healthy baby. They find the arrival of a baby changes the attitude of some of the locals: 'A couple on their own can cause suspicion and rumour. A baby makes sense. It conveys a degree of permanency'.

After a while they start converting some of the barns into a studio, dark-room and office, they build a greenhouse and make a kitchen garden, all the time struggling to stay afloat.

'So why do we stay? People often ask us this. Wouldn't it be easier to live in the city and come to the cottage for weekends? Maybe. But now that we've had a taste of the wilderness  and isolation, it's difficult to step out of it. '

'For here, in the depth of the highlands, more than any other place we know, we can give our children the chance to run free in the wild open spaces. And, to us, that's the biggest dream of all.'

Ghillie seems to have found her calling in Scotland and still lives in the cottage, without Jonathan. She writes cookery books, gives workshops and rents out a converted barn. Her children have their own businesses in Scotland but also join forces with their mum. You can read all about it here

*) I prefer to buy paper copies of all the books I write about on this blog, but in this case I was not able to.

One Man & His Plot by Michael Leapman (1976).

I bought this book in 1979 and have not really looked at it since. Like some other books I bought in the seventies it is completely falling apart. 

In the UK 1974 was a year of strikes, power restrictions and the three-day week. And there were shortages. 'Lavatory paper, as I recall, was the first item to fall into short supply.' Sounds familiar ...   When broad beans become hard to find Times Diarist Michael Leapman decides to see about finding an allotment. This is not easy, with waiting lists everywhere, but eventually he finds one near Brixton prison, owned by the Water Board, at 35 p a year. The plot has not been used for ages and is completely overgrown with weeds.

Micheal plans to reclaim the plot gradually and sows and plants on the parts he has cleared. He reports on his progress now and then, striking a chord with readers and the letters pour in, often with (conflicting) advice. Later in the year comments and parodies appear in other papers. 

Balancing working on the allotment with his duties as a journalist is hard and he is not really able to interest family members into helping him: 'my sister-in-law went armed with a folding chair, a rug and a Sunday newspaper, which was nog the idea at all.' However, he finds that even when he returns to find everything overgrown with weeds, the shallots, beans and lettuces are still doing well.

Later on, there is the problem many gardeners face: 'your produce always comes to maturity just as you go away on holiday.' Once again the vegetables survive his absence and he continues to harvest tomatoes, lettuces, marrows and beans. One of the marrows he grows and writes about with great enthousiasm is 'Vegetable Spaghetti.' To his delight Jane Grigson,  a famous cookery writer, telephones him to say that she is writing a book about vegetables and can he advise her on how to cook a vegetable spaghetti marrow?  Alas, I got rid of this cookbook some years ago (because, although I liked reading it I never cooked any recipes from it) so I can't look up her recipe.

The book ends with a list of the vegetables that Michael grew, with notes on how they did, and tips on what to do when.

If you grow vegetables this is a fun book to read about a fellow gardener's experiences. However,  Michael was in such a hurry to finish the book that he did not wait to see how his onions and pumpkins did, nor do we know if he continued with the allotment.

It is also a little time capsule from a bygone era: a time when books on gardening and cooking were quite rare, use of weedkillers was quite common and the only thing you could do with a marrow was to boil it for half an hour and eat it with pepper and salt.

Micheal Leapman wrote many more books on a variety of subjects. He died in 2023. His obituary can be found here .

Wind in the Ash Tree by Jeanine McMullen, with illustrations by Michael Woods (1988)

  

This is Jeanine McMullen's second book on her Small Country Living.  It is about the people she meets, but mostly it is about animals. We know from her first book that Jeanine loves them and feels a need to surround herself with them. That book ended with her receiving a legacy from her father, her mother returning to Australia, and her proposal for a BBC programme called  A Small Country Living being accepted. 

In this book she backtracks a bit as once again she worries about paying the bills and hopes the BBC will take up her idea for a programme. She does not seem to be made for living alone and, after the death of her beloved whippet Merlin, and other animals falling sick, she is relieved to hear her mother, 'Mrs. P' is once again on her way to Wales.

Jeanine's small country living includes dogs, sheep, pigs, horses, ducks, chickens and goats. She is always determined not to buy any more only to succumb to temptation. First she finds a chihuahua called Winston for Mrs.P, then she is anxious to find a replacement for Merlin and a new puppy joins the pack: his great nephew called Merlyn. On one of the final pages we find Jeanine unable to resist a lurcher puppy: Lilly.

 

Most of the animals we got to know in the first book are still at the farm. A few halfbred Icelandic sheep are added when she meets a breeder for her radio show.

Doli, Jeanine's horse starts suffering from an assortment of ailments, which seem to be an indication of boredom, so she is sold to a friend who runs the Smallholder's Training Centre were there is plenty of work for her. A few years later, much to her delight, she is able to buy her back.

 

Halfway throught the book the BBC finally commissions her to make a programme.  Much to her relief it does well: 'For a success it was, in spite of being tucked away on a mid-afternoon slot and quite unpublicized. The morning after it was broadcast, there come a pile of letters which people must have written the moment we were off the air. (..) All of them were ecstatic.' Jeanine travels the length and breadth of the UK to find places, people and animals for her programme.

While this is certainly a book for people who like to read about animals, I enjoyed it because of the interesting people Jeanine meets. I had fun trying to find out more about them.

There is vet Bertie Ellis who had a long career and served on the RCVS Council.

Sue and Darrell Kingerlee ran a bookshop in Llandovery. Darrell wrote Llandovery Album: Pictures of a Welsh Market Town.

Muriel and Jack Sassoon who ran an antiques shop and a second hand bookshop in London.

Ian Wilson who wrote The Turin Shroud.

Gerald and Imogen Summers. Gerald wrote The Lure of the Falcon,  illustrated by 'the Artist ', Jeanine's erstwhile partner, whose name seems to be Duncan McLaren.

Madge Hooper, who wrote several books on herbs.

Antique dealer Barbara Leach.

Andrew and Carry Naylor , Sarah Pitt and Monica Sims, who all worked for the BBC

Diana Joly who bred icelandic sheep.

Artist Leesa Sandys-Lumsdaine.

Sedly Sweeny (who was really called Sedley Bell-Irving Sweeny) and who wrote The Challenge of Small Holding.

 Now I am on the lookout for book number three: A Small Country Living Goes On.

Wil den Hollander - Bronder

While staying at a campsite recently I was browsing the books left behind by other campers and I noticed 'Johanna' by Wil den Hollander. I took it home because I own most of this author's other books though it had been a very long time since I read any. It was only after reading part of 'Johanna' that the penny dropped: these books have a connection with my 'blog books'. It had never occurred to me, I suppose because they are on another floor, on another shelf, with my Dutch novels.

I first encountered Wil den Hollander's stories in my teens, when they were serialised in the weekly magazine my mother read. The author, born in 1915, had emigrated to France in 1947 with her husband and young son to start a farm. In France three daughters were born. She had a very hard life in a strange country, running the household, looking after the children, making cheese, looking after the animals and kitchen garden. She had a taciturn husband who mostly left her to get on with things.

And she wrote. I would say her books are autobiographies disguised as novels. I bought the books in my twenties and found them fascinating, but I had not looked at them until now. There was one thing I remembered most of all: the massive meals Wil had to cook. At times of harvesting or threshing many men came to work at the farm and they had to be fed. In Holland she would have given them sandwiches but in France that just would not do.

Just to give you an idea here is a loose translation from a chapter on threshing. This meant 20 men coming to help and they had to be fed five times a day. Three meals consisting of bread with cheese or meat, cider and coffee with brandy. 

'But it was the hot meals I worried about. Simone helped me draw up a lunch menu: hors d'oeuvres, stock made with three kilo's of beef to which I had to add cream and eggs and tapioca. Followed by green beans in cream, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, four boiled chickens with a creamy sauce, a few fruit tarts, followed by coffee and brandy. In the evening I could serve the leftovers with salad, fried potatoes, and a roast.

The food that had been so carefully prepared was appreciated, but the pudding served with cream and fruit was received with mirth: did Madame think she was entertaining babies? Anything containing milk was not men's food.

I had taken six liters of brandy from the barrel and still they were yelling for more.... 

Wil was a natural storyteller and I was fascinated once again. Apart from books on her farm she wrote about her daughter, who suffered from MS and died young, and her son, who was conscripted into the army at the time of the war in Algeria. I can certainly recommend these books to my Dutch readers.

More information in Wil den Hollander can be found here.

 

Still here!

 Just to say I am still here, I haven't given up on the blog but it is summer and I am doing other things!

A Job For All Seasons: My Small Country Living by Phylidda Barstow (2013)

 

What did I say in my first post? That I was not too keen on reading about animals, or reading books by (rich) people with nannies? Hmmm, somehow Phylidda Barstow made the grade anyway. Before nanny appeared I was completely taken in by her first chapter which deals with buying chickens from a poultry farm:

'In each cage, whose sloping floor was no bigger than a sheet of typing paper, were crammed five clucking, cackling, jostling, pellet-picking chickens, their constantly moving heads pale brown, their staring eyes round and mad, and their bodies almost completely naked'.

'Seventy weeks of close confinement had eradicated all normal chicken behaviour.' The chickens cannot even walk. 'By the next morning two had keeled over and lay stiffly, necks extended - killed, I imagine, by the sudden change in conditions - but the others had begin to shuffle around the playpen, hoisting themselves along with their wings, rather like babies just before they can crawl.'

It takes eight weeks for their feathers to start growing again, and it is a long time before they lay eggs again.

In the early '60's Phylidda and her family, plus Nanny, move to the house in the Chilterns, where her husband (Duff) was brought up. It has a garden and a few acres of land. The first chapters deal with their stay there. Later they move to a farm in Gloucestershire, which comes with more land and enables them to keep more animals. The book is mostly about these animals: chickens, dogs, cats, bees, horses, sheep and alpaca's.

One of the lessons Phyllida learns is to leave well alone: be it moving orphaned chicks in with another hen's brood or hand rearing a ram: it seldom ends well.

The chapters about BSE and Foot And Mouth disease are down to earth and moving and really bring home the risks that farmers run, and the awful fate that awaits animals struck by these diseases.

I would urge anyone who is thinking of keeping sheep to read the chapter The Shepherding Year. There is so much that can go wrong, it would put me off forever!

Phyllida writes about the animals they keep, but also about the ones that invite themselves: 

'Furred or feathered, with two legs or four, with gossamer wings, or far too many feet, or just a single foot attached to a stomach, 'the frontier tribes' are what I call the unofficial, unauthorised residents of our smallholding'.

We can probably all identify with her feelings on magpies: 'Without wanting to sound too high-flown, I feel that all creation has an equal right to life, and animals cannot be blamed for following the nature they have been allotted - at least I do until the juicy, self-satisfied clucking of a magpie raiding small birds' nests in the garden sends such liberal principles flying out of the window.'

If it isn't magpies, it is woodpigeons raiding fruit bushes and vegetable plots, foxes eating the chickens, moles upsetting the lawn, slugs and snails .... Well, we all know the list goes on. One chapter is written from the viewpoint of these animals.

Phyllida manages to grow most of her own food. Selling has been another matter, because of all the rules involved. Therefore she and het husband have not been tempted to give up the day job, 'and anyway running a smallholding is more a way of life than of making a living, since there is small hope of earning more tham just enough to cover the costs.'

 

 

Stones & Stars, a Year in West Cork by Denise Hall (1994)

 

After living in the USA for 10 years journalist Denise Hall moved back to her native Ireland. She found a home in Barley Cottage, near the coastal village of  Glengarrif, West Cork. There was no electricity or running water when she moved in, and she is slowly doing up the cottage, hoping to install a bathroom one day. She has a half acre of land, where she keeps her horse Kitty.

She is struggling to earn a living when one day she meets a local auctioneer who tells her: 'What you should do is buy Lickeen". Denis knows all about Lickeen: '70 acres of land plus a derelict farmhouse, perched halfway up a mountain, the track to it undriveable". At Christmas Denise's daughter Amy, her boyfriend Bryn and family friend Katherine visit and they take a walk to Lickeen. 'To this day my daughter insists it was me who first mentioned buying the place, but I still find that hard to believe. Anyway, once the idea was released into the crisp winter's air, it just refused to go away.'

Soon after Denise becomes the owner and is hit by the realisation of what she has taken on: 'What in God's name was I doing here?. One woman and a hatchet against this untamed wilderness? And while I was indulging in a bit of belated self-flagellation I might as well admit that my new home was unliveable in, even by my fairly flexible standards.'

She discovers that she can get a grant for installing electricity, a condition being that she has livestock. One cow will do. Enter aptly named Electra. Denise starts work on the house and has a builder restore chimney stack and the roof. He also installs a new window, letting much needed light into the kitchen. Work starts on the 'undriveable track' and instead of carrying everything up, she is at last able to drive to Lickeen. 

To make some money she starts writing about her experiences. Her obituary states that this became the column 'Lickeen Letters". Her children come to help, and during the last months of the year Denise struggles to get everything finished before Christmas, when she has to move out of her cottage. Electricity is installed, the kitchen finished and a bathroom installed, and at last Denise had her dream come true:  she can take long hot baths!

After Christmas she still has a hectic time, what with cow Electra and dog Sam giving birth, and having to face all the bills coming in.The story ends on a positive note when a publisher agrees to publish Denise's book.  'I realized that this was only the beginning. Lickeen - this frustrating, infuriating, exhilirating, irresistable place - had not finished with me yet. But that's another story for another day ...' However, as far as I know, she never published another book.

Denise Hall died in 2015, when she was 69. Her obituary states she was living at Lickeen West, Glengarrif at the time of her death. I assume this is the property described in the book.

A Part of Myself by Carl Zuckmayer (1970)

 In an earlier post I wrote about The Farm in the Green Mountains by Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer. I mentioned that although I liked the book, quite a few things remained unclear. Recently a blog reader told me that Alice's husband Carl Zuckmayer published his autobiography A Part of Myself in 1970. In it, he also writes about their time on the farm in Vermont, so this should provide us with more information.

The book is available second hand, but it is very expensive. However, you can read it for free on the Internet Archive

The Kerracher Man by Eric MacLeod (2007)

 

 

In 1976, after Eric MacLeod's father inherits his brother's croft in a bay near Kylesku (Sutherland), Eric and his wife Ruth impulsively decide to go and live there. The croft is accessible only by boat or by a 1,5 mile walk from Kylesku. At the time their two daughters Ruthie and Clare are aged 5 and 3. The decision means Eric, who has been working as a management accountant for an international company, quits his job.

'My mother was horrified and so was Ruth's. Indeed we soon discovered this was the reaction we would get from most people. Neither of our mothers could understand why we would give up such a comfortable and secure life for something akin to living in a cave.'

In the hot summer of 1976 they pack their belongings and move north. The house is in such a bad state that at first they move into a caravan (which had to be floated in on a raft!). Later kind neighbours offer them their house to stay in during the winter.  Bit by bit the house is restored, and a water supply and, much later, electricity are installed. Meanwhile Eric tries to earn some money by doing the school run and by gathering and selling seaweed and lobsters. Ruth works as a hairdresser.

 

 

Eric and Ruth get to know many people in the area and find that there are always neighbours willing to help them and offer hospitality. For a while they keep sheep, and they also develop their kitchen garden, using John Seymour's book as a guide. The children go to primary school locally (this involves a long walk to the road) and later board during the week in Drumbeg.

'Ruthie and Clare explored the surrounds of Kerracher with great freedom, and they learned about the natural world when they were very young. Their proximity to nature meant they discovered at first hand what other children could only learn from books.'

'We were conscious from the start that we were sharing our lives with the wild creatures which had always inhabited this landscape - and the sea.' They share their surroundings with otters, porpoises, seals, killer whales, birds, badgers, deer and foxes.

Making a living remains a problem: selling seaweed and lobsters and vegetables from their garden does not bring in enough. Later Eric makes money odd jobbing and doing accounts work. Then for a few years they are successful fish farmers.

After the children finish school and leave to go to university they decide to sell up and move house, but much to Eric 's pleasure in 2011 his niece buys Kerracher.

When I heard about this book I ordered it right away as it is one of the few I know of to feature a family. I must say I was slightly underwhelmed by it. It is a perfectly nice story, but somehow it all is a bit bland and it did not grab me like some of the other books I own.

And the winner is ...

 As promised all names of people interested in a copy of A Patch in the Forest were put in a hat today:

And the winner was:

Details have been emailed to Odette. To everyone who took part: thanks for reading my blog and joining in, better luck next time, and of course a very Happy New Year!

Would you like a copy of A Patch in the Forest by Elizabeth West?

 

Those of you who have been trying to buy a copy of A Patch in the Forest will know that it is out of print and that second hand copies are hard to come by and expensive. The cheapest I saw today was £ 28. So I was very pleased to hear from Phillippa. She told me she had found this book in a charity shop for only £ 1 and as she already owns a copy she is willing to give it to someone who will refund her costs   (£ 1 plus postage, Phillippa lives in the UK).

So: are you interested? If so, send me an email at farmsonmybookshelf@gmail.com before 1 January 2024.

All names received will be put in a hat and a name will be drawn on 1 January after which I will contact the lucky winner!

Whay and Dorothy Campion

Having written a few posts on Dorothy Campion and her book Take Not Our Mountain, I have always wanted to find out what happened to her and her family. Now photographer Dylan Arnold has published a book, in Welsh, with photo's and stories of lost and forgotten places in Wales, including Nyth Bran, where Dorothy lived. Information on the book and where to buy it can be found here and here

If you would like to find out more about Dylan's work please have a look at his website or his facebook page

Dylan has been very kind and sent me Dorothy's story (in English) and has given permission to publish it on my blog, for which I am very grateful. Here it is: 

THE CAMPIONS 

It’s unclear when Hugh Tetlow’s Aunt Nancy, and her mother left Nyth Bran, but in 1947 a new owner had taken it on. Thomas Whawell Campion, or ’Whay’ as he was known to all, was an ex-commando. He had been medically discharged from the army in 1946. At the end of the war, Whay had a haemorrhage on his lung as a result of contracting tuberculosis. At the time, effective medicines had not yet been developed for TB, it was therefore regarded as a serious, contagious illness. Due to the severity of Whay’s condition, he had not been given long to live. He’d allegedly contracted TB whilst hunkered down in a cave in Greece, fighting alongside Tito’s partisans. He regularly suffered recurring, debilitating bouts, which would leave him bed-bound for a week or more. Whay eventually overcame it, but it took several years before his condition drastically improved, against all odds. When the war ended in Europe, Whay returned to the family home in Betws y Coed. He could have stayed at home to be nursed by his doting mother and his two older sisters, but Whay could never have been a dependent invalid. He decided that he needed a home of his own; preferably an isolated and quiet bolthole, where he could recuperate from his illness, lead a simple, peaceful life, and escape the horrors of war that haunted him.  

The remote cabin of Nyth Bran was perched over 800ft at the end of a rough, unmade mountain track above Capel Curig. It had come up for sale, and ticked all the boxes for Whay. There were wild acres of woodland and moors surrounding the house, not to mention the spectacular views over the valley below, and towards Moel Siabod to the South. When Whay bought Nyth Bran, it was in a state of considerable disrepair. He undertook the extensive renovations himself over several months. He rented three hundred acres of the surrounding mountain land for his new flock of one hundred and thirty sheep. Whay cladded Nyth Bran’s lounge in half cut sections of logs. He had worked as a timber contractor for the coal board supplying pit props, which is where he ‘sourced’ the lengths of wood. He decked the hallway with wooden planks that were once the floorboards of The Royal Oak Hotel in Betws y Coed. “Whay was able to turn his hand to anything, and often did, in order to make ends meet. Everything at Nyth Bran, he did himself. He’d build sheds from scratch and repair everything. He’d completed an automobile technician course in the army for a couple of months. He’d take an engine out of the jeep and fix it. Nothing fazed him at all. He seemed to be able to do anything with a screwdriver and a hammer.” 

Whay could easily live off the land. He was fearless and self sufficient. He was a resilient, determined, and resourceful character, with more than his fair share of charm, humour and charisma. Born on the 27th of June, 1918, he could not walk until he was seven years old, following a childhood accident that had left his legs crushed. By the age of fourteen, he was working on deep-sea fishing trawlers in the North Sea during his school holidays. Whay overcame his physical challenges and pursued his great love for the outdoors. Rock climbing was a particular passion of his. As well as being a formidable climber, he was a qualified, expert skier and a well respected mountain guide in Snowdonia and the Austrian Tyrol. He was also an active member of The Mountain Rescue in Snowdonia. Before the Second World War, Whay embarked on a mountaineering and research expedition to the far north of Norway, conquering a previously unclimbed peak on the Sweden/Finland border, while collecting data on plant and animal life. Whay also sailed on two expeditions as a scientific researcher, collecting geographical data and plant specimens from South America and Newfoundland for The British Museum. He also embarked on a museum funded Arctic expedition. He then set sail around the world on a small yacht for two years, for his own pleasure.  

 

It was his spirit of adventure that lead him to join the army in 1939. He was sent with the British Expeditionary Force in 1940 and later evacuated to Dunkirk with his unit, The Sherwood Foresters. Whay rarely spoke about the war with his family, but later said that Dunkirk had been ‘horrific’. He had been wounded in battle several times and bore many physical and emotional scars to prove it. Whay escaped death numerous times on the battlefield, once by bending his head to light a cigarette whilst a bullet which would have severed it whistled past. After Dunkirk, Whay signed up with No.2 Special Services Brigade, which would later develop into the formation of No.9 Commando. Later he would also serve with No.11 Commando. Whay was in at the start of the Commandos, when they were formed in 1940, on the order of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. It was decided that an elite force was needed that could carry out raids against German-occupied Europe. These soldiers were hand picked for their intelligence, capability and resilience. Their training was nothing short of revolutionary at the time, and much of it is still used today. 

Whay spent most of the next six years of his life serving in various European countries during the Second World War, for which he was awarded the Military Medal, amongst others. He fought in Sicily, Crete, France, Italy and Greece, and was also sent out twice to the Middle East. Whay fought in several infamous wartime battles, and played a part in the daring raid on St.Nazaire, France in 1942, and the brutal Battle of Anzio, Italy in 1944.  

When Whay returned from the war, it had taken it’s toll on him and inevitably changed his outlook on life. Nyth Bran gave him the much needed solace he needed to recover from tuberculosis, and the grim wartime ordeals he had experienced. His two dogs, Hemp and Trigger, were his sole companions at lonely Nyth Bran. Despite the solitude he’d craved for after fighting in the war, there were times he felt very isolated. That was about to change in 1952 when he met Dorothy Johns. Dorothy was born into a wealthy, high-society upbringing in Manchester, and consequently, had a taste for the finer things in life. The only passing acquaintance she’d had with Snowdonia was when she had raced through in her father’s Bentley during motor car trials. She liked socialising, theatres, expensive clothes and dining at fine restaurants. Dorothy had tried her hand at a few  things, including modeling, horse-show jumping, and for a brief time she was a racing car driver. According to Dorothy, she was happiest when she undertook her training for the role of auxiliary nurse. Dorothy had a young daughter, Jane, from a previous ‘disastrous’ marriage, who was three years old when her mother met Whay. Dorothy’s father had been a successful businessman for many years until his company went bankrupt. Following the liquidation, the family moved to Rhos on Sea, North Wales, to start a new life, but sadly Dorothy’s father died of cancer not long afterwards. Dorothy and Whay seemed an unlikely couple but nonetheless they fell very much in love. Whay hadn’t had much experience of being around children, but after a tentative start, Whay and Jane warmed to each other. After Dorothy and Jane had stayed at Nyth Bran a few times, Whay decided he couldn’t live there alone without them anymore. After a brief courtship lasting a few weeks, Whay and Dorothy were married in Betws y Coed on Christmas Eve 1952. Dorothy’s mother doubted her daughter’s suitability to a rural life. 

Dorothy and Jane settled into life at Nyth Bran. At first, Dorothy found it a jarring culture shock from the affluent city life she’d left behind. Facilities at the farm were basic. There was still no electricity, and water had to be pulled from the well. Later on, when Whay had connected the taps to the water supply, bathing during Springtime would often result in a bath full of frogspawn. Dorothy, however, was determined to prove her capability and devotion to Whay. She took on duties as wife, homemaker and shepherdess. Whay farmed, and made ends meet by taking on additional work as a local mountain guide and working for the Forestry Commission. Jane thrived at Nyth Bran, she and Whay became inseparable. In Jane’s own words, she was “like his shadow”. She would look forward to getting up early to help Whay with the sheep, feeding the hens, fencing and whatever other duties had to be done on the farm. It was only a quick walk down Nyth Bran’s track to reach the primary school, where Jane made many happy memories. Dorothy wasn’t so keen on her daughter learning Welsh though, and later sent her to an English medium boarding school in Llanrwst. 

During the snow and blizzards of the winter months, Whay would ski around the mountainside on his daily rounds to check the flock and dig the occasional sheep out of heavy drifts. He would pull a thrilled Jane along in a sled he’d made for her from some of his old skis. They were accompanied by Dorothy and their dogs, Carlo, Hemp, Trigger and Bobby, who helped to sniff out any snow-buried sheep. There was a particularly big freeze the year Whay moved into Nyth Bran. The farm was engulfed in snowdrifts to the point that Whay had to lift the skylight in the kitchen, exit the building via the hatch and skied to Betws y Coed to get food using some old Norwegian cross country skis he had. 

In the spring, Nyth Bran welcomed its newborn lambs. The kitchen would echo to the bleats of the orphaned ones. Dorothy and Jane would feed these lambs and keep them warm by the Aga. One year they looked after abandoned triplets, which they named Buttons, Bows and Loppy. Buttons and Bows were duly named because that was the song that happened to be playing on the radio when Whay bought the lambs in. Loppy earned his moniker because his ears never stood up. Whay was never a farmer in the traditional sense, he just did what he had to do in order to survive and provide for his family. There wasn’t enough money to be made farming Nyth Bran’s three hundred acres alone, and despite Whay taking on additional work whenever and wherever he could, money was always tight. 

Whay sometimes had to carry out tasks he disliked, such as destroying lambs that had been born deformed. One day Jane saw that Whay was going to shoot a pair of lambs that had been born with deformed legs. Dorothy explained why, showing Jane their twisted legs, and reasoning with her that it would be cruel to let them live in pain and unable to walk properly. Jane asked “If Daddy shoots them, will they go to heaven with grandpa?”  

A week later a Land Rover roared up Nyth Bran’s track. To Whay’s delight and surprise, it was an old army friend of his. The ex-soldier had a wooden leg, which Jane had observed and remarked “Daddy, look at his crippled leg. Do we have to shoot him too?” 

Dorothy’s mother would occasionally visit Nyth Bran from her home in Llandudno. For a while she lived at Bryn Brethynau, the cottage just below Nyth Bran. Along with neighbouring Waen Hir and Tyn y Coed, it was originally one of the farms that each had a hundred acres, that made up the three hundred acres that Whay rented. Dorothy’s brother, Peter, moved in to Nyth Bran for a while when he was around thirteen. He loved helping out on the farm and remembered those days fondly. Peter went to school at Capel Curig, and after finishing agricultural college at Glynllifon, he worked alongside Whay timber contracting in the forestry for about ten years. He looked up to Whay and later recalled “Whay was like a father to me, a lot of people thought we were father and son”.  

Whay and Dorothy had discussed the issue of children. They both wanted Jane to have a sibling. It was also their hope that one day, a son and heir would be born to them, so that he may continue shepherding at Nyth Bran and develop on the foundations that Whay and Dorothy had laid. During one, hot summer afternoon, the pair were felling a half-windblown oak tree near the house using a two handled saw. They were chatting away happily when the tree gave a sharp, warning ‘crack’. The tree swayed and teetered. “Jump!” shouted Whay, but it was too late. Dorothy was flung to the ground, unconscious, with the oak tree across her back. She regained consciousness in Bangor Hospital. Luckily, no bones were broken but surgery had to be performed on her abdominal wounds. Dorothy’s stomach muscles were badly torn and her left fallopian tube and ovary were removed. The right fallopian tube remained but was critically damaged and unlikely to function again. The doctors broke the news that it was very improbable that Dorothy would be able to give birth again. It was a devastating blow for the couple. Whay was heartbroken and blamed himself for Dorothy’s injuries. Dorothy had difficulty accepting the medical prognosis and insisted on going for further tests over the following months, hoping that somehow she would recuperate and improve to the point that pregnancy could be a possibility again. The grim situation hung over the couple like a dark cloud and Dorothy retreated into herself. Whay supported her but was also grief stricken himself. He eventually suggested to Dorothy that she should stop going for the medical tests and accept the situation, as all the tests served to do was prolong their agony. 

The strain of the situation weighed heavily on the couple. Dorothy suggested some time later that they could adopt a boy to bring up as their own. Whay immediately agreed to the idea. Dorothy knew of an orphanage with an adoption agency in Manchester, so later that night, they wrote their application.  

The daily trips down Nyth Bran’s track to collect the mail in the morning were suddenly filled with much anticipation for the eagerly awaited response from the adoption agency. It was two weeks later when Whay ran into the house, waving a letter and grinning from ear to ear. A child would be placed with them for adoption as soon as possible, providing that all necessary reports and references proved satisfactory. The couple were over the moon and danced around the kitchen. Dorothy set about gathering blue baby clothes and woollies. Together they prepared one of the bedrooms as a nursery, which they painted pale blue, in readiness for the future shepherd of Nyth Bran. 

The adoption agency let Whay and Dorothy know that a baby boy would be waiting for them in Manchester on May 21st; they were over the moon. The Campions lived a fairly isolated life at Nyth Bran, and since sending the application to the adoption agency, Dorothy had kept herself to herself and stayed at home all the time. The reason for this was because she had decided that only their immediate family, doctor and solicitor should know that the baby was adopted. Dorothy wrote “If the time should come when the child must learn that he was adopted, he should hear the truth only from our own lips”. So in preparation for their son’s arrival, Dorothy assumed the pretence of being an expectant mother near her time. A Capel Curig resident remembered seeing her around the village at that time with a pillow under her dress. They couldn’t fathom why she was pretending to be pregnant, but unbeknownst to Dorothy, it seemed that her ruse had failed to convince the locals. 

 

 

The day finally arrived when Whay and Dorothy were to meet their new son. They excitedly drove the four hours to Manchester full of hope and anticipation. The baby was beautiful. He had bright, blue eyes and a mop of golden hair. They had called him Robert Whaywell Campion. Whay and Dorothy were ecstatic and couldn’t wait to bring him home. For the first time in months their lives felt complete.  

It was shortly after Robert’s arrival at the farm, that the electricity board finally connected Nyth Bran to the grid, despite the rest of Capel Curig being connected some time ago. There was much excitement when Robert was fed and bathed by electric light! Just as Jane had accompanied her parents around the farm as soon as she’d arrived there, so too did Robert, as the family carried out their daily duties. They carted him everywhere in his blue cot and laid him in shaded areas as they got on with their work. Jane absolutely doted on her new baby brother, and was always on hand to keep him amused and comforted. Whay couldn’t have been happier. He was very attentive father to Robert, nursing and feeding him gently. Whay loved pushing Robert in his pram, talking animatedly to him all the while. Since Robert’s arrival, Dorothy and Whay felt closer and happier together than they had done in a long time. 

One morning at Nyth Bran, Dorothy alleged that an unexpected and sinister phone call took place between her and an anonymous woman. The call was to turn their lives upside down. According to Dorothy, the caller first asked how Whay’s lung was currently doing. Assuming that the woman was a friend of Whay’s, Dorothy replied that it was fine and that Whay had never felt better. The caller then asked when Whay had received his last check-up and xray, to which Dorothy replied that it was six months previously and all was satisfactory. Dorothy, sensing an unpleasant tone to the caller’s voice, asked who she was, but the woman gave nothing away. The caller then suggested that Robert had not been born to Dorothy and Whay, stating that Somerset House had no record of a baby being born to them. The caller then informed Dorothy that she would be writing to the Health Centre to share information that they ought to know, like the true state of Whay’s health, and that in the caller’s opinion Whay wasn’t a fit person to be taking on the responsibility of an adopted child. The caller then hung up. According to Dorothy, she immediately called the telephone exchange to trace the caller, but the operator could only confirm that it had been a local call. 

Whay had never made a secret of the fact he’d had TB years ago, or how seriously ill he had been as a result. The Campions neglected to include this information on the adoption form, since Whay had recovered to perfect health. The Campions contacted their solicitor, who advised they do nothing and wait, in case the call was a bluff. Two days and nights passed, during which their lives felt in limbo. There was only a matter of days to go when Robert’s adoption papers should have been signed and completed and The Campions’ probation period with Robert were to come to an end. On the next day, the Health Officer telephoned. The Welfare Centre had received an anonymous letter giving all the details of Whay’s past illness, stating that he had a haemorrhage in 1946, that there have been a cavity in one lung, that after the war it had taken him six years to recover his health, but he still went to Llandudno hospital for a twice yearly checkup, and that in the opinion of the writer he was not a fit person to father an adopted child. Despite Whay’s perfect present health, the health officer was perturbed. If the facts in the anonymous letter were true, the officer stated that the Campions case must be reconsidered. Whay and Dorothy begged and pleaded how much Robert meant to them. They frantically wrote to the orphanage Robert had come from, to Whay’s doctors, three solicitors and a barrister, and their local Member of Parliament. Despite their best efforts, the Health Officer telephoned her final word on the adoption society’s behalf: Robert must be returned to the orphanage. 

It was 1955, Robert had been at Nyth Bran for three or four months at this point. Whay and Dorothy had never regarded him as adopted, but as their very own; ‘a gift from God’. When they drove to Manchester to hand Robert back, they were both utterly broken. In the weeks that followed, they were unable to eat, sleep or even think straight. They saw visions of Robert everywhere at home. The farm was neglected while they grieved. Their sense of pain and loss was unbearable. Dorothy described feeling like “the only occupants of a deserted ship, drifting without a compass or even a star to guide it”. 

Spring came to the farm, and with it, the realisation that the family would either have to sink or swim. It was lambing time and there was much work to get stuck into if they were to survive. Whay and Dorothy broke the news to the villagers about what had happened to Robert and tried their best to get on with their lives. They eventually managed to regain some of their vigour to get on with their daily duties.  

As previously mentioned, there was never much money to go around, but having neglected the farm for so long after losing Robert, the Campions were feeling hard financial pressure. After coming to live at Nyth Bran, Dorothy had taken up writing to fill in the hours that she was on her own while Whay was out working. Dorothy had penned a semi autobiographical manuscript over the last few months which was about to save them financially for the time being. Luckily for the Campions, Dorothy had her first book published that year. ‘1000ft Up’ was a collection of mostly fictitious stories, loosely based on elements of Dorothy’s life. The book didn’t achieve any significant critical success but it did sell reasonably well, and earned her some much needed funds. 

Dorothy’s sister, June Johns, was also a writer. She worked as a journalist for The Daily Mirror. June pulled a few strings with her media connections, so that in May 1956 ‘Woman’ magazine published Dorothy’s autobiographical account of her life at Nyth Bran. The story was serialised and ran for several weeks in the magazine. This bought Dorothy exposure, not to mention some fame and fortune, which paved the way for the release of her second book, ‘Take Not Our Mountain’ the following year. The book told the story of The Campions’ lives as shepherds on their remote, Welsh mountain farm. Her story captured the hearts of readers across the nation and beyond. The book flew off the shelves and was a huge success. The Campions started getting lots of curious visitors coming up to Nyth Bran. Hundreds of readers of Take Not Our Mountain, wanted to meet Dorothy and her family in person! Many of them got their cars stuck on the rough, steep track along the way up to the farm. Whilst Take Not Our Mountain is entertaining and mostly factual, there are aspects of the book that have been romanticised or glossed over. Some recorded events were possibly set-pieces for the purposes of storytelling. The main difference between Dorothy’s written account and that of actual events, is how Dorothy portrayed herself in the book. According to the book, Dorothy worked alongside Whay on the farm, and had immersed herself in all the different aspects of its daily running. By all accounts, Dorothy did very little on the farm, and didn’t like to get her hands dirty. Dorothy’s relationship with Jane was also not as harmonious as portrayed in the book. According to Jane, there was never much love or affection shown to her by her mother, and that it was Whay who mostly took care and supported her. Nevertheless, Take Not Our Mountain sold very well, earning Dorothy a lot of money. She was asked to present talks to various local and national groups, radio and magazine interviews and book tours to promote the book. She would sometimes spend weeks away from home during these promotions. During the course of the book tours and various public and social engagements, she began to mix with well-known authors and high profile people. Dorothy started dressing in expensive clothes again. She had found moderate, new-found wealth, not to mention some fame. She began to rekindle the life that she had once been accustomed to, the life she’d left behind when she married Whay. 

 At this point, when Jane was about thirteen, she barely spent any time at home. During the week she was boarding at St.Gerards School in Bangor. Dorothy had sent her there against Whay’s wishes. On weekends, Jane would stay at her grandmother’s in Llandudno as her mother had demanded. This may have been because things were getting fraught between Dorothy and Whay at home. Jane continued at St.Gerards until she completed her O levels, age fifteen. In 1959 Dorothy released her third and final book, ‘The Perfect Team’. The book explored the teamwork of police dog handlers and their Alsatian canine partners. In the course of researching the book and gathering material, Dorothy interviewed hundreds of police and armed services dog handlers all over the UK. She traveled thousands of miles over ten months, accompanied by her Alsatian, ‘Smokey’. He had been the sire that she bred other dogs with. Liverpool, Manchester and Birkenhead police forces all had dogs trained by Dorothy. She had been commissioned by her publisher to write a fourth book about police horses, which was to be called ‘Law in the Saddle’, but that never materialized.   

Dorothy spent months on the road promoting ‘The Perfect Team’ across the UK. She lived in various cities during that time, mixing in high-society, literary circles again. Jane’s suspicions that things weren’t well between her parents were confirmed when a solicitor visited her at St.Gerards, wanting Jane to speak about her mother in a divorce court. Later, at the hearing, Jane told the court that she didn’t want to be with her mother because she had never been the subject of her love or affection. She expressed how it was Whay who had always cared for her, and who was always there for her. Jane pleaded with the courts to let her stay with her dad. It was at this point that Dorothy called out “He’s not your dad!” That was how Jane found out that Whay wasn’t her biological father. Jane was on her knees, sobbing and hanging on to Whay, while he broke down too. In those days, the courts almost always gave custody to the mother; this case was no exception, despite Jane’s desperate pleas.  

After the divorce, Dorothy forbade Jane to get in touch with Whay again. Jane desperately wanted to though, and asked her grandmother’s advice about it one day. Her grandmother advised against contact, knowing what Dorothy’s temper was like. As the years passed, Jane never did get to speak to Whay again, but to this day, he’s often in her thoughts. 

Dorothy went to live with her mother in Llandudno for a while, before eventually moving to Sussex. After finishing her O levels at St.Gerards, Jane followed her mother down to the south of England, where she was enrolled at a finishing school at Guildford. That was around the time when Jane met her mother’s new partner, Dennis Luckham. Dennis was a wealthy businessman who owned a large company making hospital equipment in Burgess Hill. When Jane came home from school one weekend, Dorothy announced that she’d married Dennis. They were wed on the 21st December, 1964. The marriage had it’s fair share of problems before ending in divorce in 1970. When they divorced, Dennis bought Dorothy a pretty, thatched cottage in Huntingdon, where she lived till the end of her days. Dorothy lived a lonely life there. She eventually met some spiritual couples and joined them in following God. Dorothy didn’t write any more books, but she kept herself busy writing poetry. Dorothy died alone, aged fifty five, on 8th January, 1980.  

After Jane finished her schooling at Guildford, she went on to do nurse training and worked as a nurse for many years. She settled in Hastings, where she met her first husband and had six children. Jane remarried in 1984 but sadly her husband died of a heart attack 18 months later. She remarried again in 1987. Jane and her third husband had twenty years together before he passed away in 2007. Jane currently lives with her son in Kent.   

Dorothy’s brother, Peter, lost touch with Whay after the divorce. Peter moved to Llanrwst, where he met his second wife. They emigrated to Canada in 1981 and have lived there since. Peter farmed a ranch for a while, then took on factory work for twenty five years before retiring in 2001. Peter and his wife have a son, daughter and grandchildren, who live close by.  

 

Whay and Dorothy had a very acrimonious divorce. Whay carried on at Nyth Bran but had given up farming it by then. He worked most of the time for the Forestry Commission but also took on various jobs to make ends meet, such as contracting, general maintenance and small building jobs. He also drove a minibus for The Swallow Falls Hotel. At some point around the early to mid sixties, Whay met and fell in love with Olga Gross (nee Parry). The pair were married in 1971. Olga was twice divorced and had two sons, Andy and Michael. Andy was the youngest and was about twelve years old when he moved into Nyth Bran, Michael was eleven years older. Whay and young Andy were particularly close, Whay treated Andy as his own son. Andy looked up to Whay and regarded him as his dad. Olga and Whay did everything together, they were very well suited and very much in love. Andy loved his time at Nyth Bran, remembering the location as an ‘idyllic’ place to grow up. “You could wander for miles and do what you liked. Although my friends in Betws y Coed were only five miles away, they might as well have been on the other side of the world”. Whay had a couple of pet alsatians and Olga had a sheepdog and a couple of donkeys. The donkeys were like big dogs that would follow Whay and Olga everywhere on the farm. Whenever anyone would lay on the grass, the donkeys would join and lie down too. Sometimes they would even go into the house.  

Although Whay was tight-lipped about his military past, he would occasionally tell Andy and Michael tales from his commando days.  Andy remembered Whay telling him about the time he did his first parachute drop, and that it was going to be operational. Whay had said that basically, he learned how to jump out of an aeroplane - by jumping out of an aeroplane. Another story involved him being posted to Sicily. Whay was being chased at night by a German patrol. He came to a wall, jumped over it and landed on a dead German soldier on the other side. The corpse was bloated and filled with gas. When Whay’s feet landed on the body it emitted a long, loud fart. “Of all the things I had to land on, it was a dead German! Lucky he was dead because there were live ones running up behind, shooting at me!” 

Andy recalled Whay having a Certificate of Service on the wall at Nyth Bran that listed all the countries No.9 and No.11 Commando had served. Whay had an ‘X’ against most of them, along with a copy of his medal awards at the bottom. Unsurprisingly, Whay never spoke about how he had been awarded his medals. It caused much consternation for him to talk about it. Once, when questioned about them by Dorothy, he reluctantly and angrily answered “They are pieces of silver, awarded for bravery, given to me for the fine way I killed…”  The Commandos did a lot of things that these days would be regarded as unacceptable in the modern world. Since the war, Whay had suffered with what would nowadays be almost certainly recognised as PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). At night, he would sometimes wake the house up, screaming in bed, plagued by terrible nightmares from the things he’d seen during the war. Jane also recollected him suffering nightmares when she lived there. Olga eventually persuaded Whay to see a doctor about them. 

In 1970 Andy left Nyth Bran to start an apprenticeship with the RAF. He was eventually posted to Germany but regularly came home on leave.  A few years later came the devastating news of Olga’s cancer diagnosis. Whay nursed her tenderly throughout her illness and the pair spent all their available time together. Whay would only work when they really needed money, in order to maximise the time he had left with his wife. When Olga became more immobile due to her failing health, she and Whay would mess about on ‘monkey bikes’ around the farm for entertainment, as she could not easily leave home at that point.  

Olga passed away in June 1976, aged fifty three. Whay was devastated. Andy returned from Germany for his mother’s funeral. Olga’s ashes were scattered on the mound outside the back of Nyth Bran. When Andy was due to return to Germany, Whay said his farewells and told Andy he’d see him at Christmas. Sadly, that would be the last time Andy saw him. Whay sadly died, broken hearted at Nyth Bran four months later, on October 17th, 1976, aged fifty eight.  

Nyth Bran then passed on to Andy. He was only twenty one years old, and still coming to terms with his mother’s death when Whay’s sudden passing sent him reeling. It was understandably a very traumatic time for Andy, who didn’t know what to do with the house. Andy helped his friend out by letting him stay at Nyth Bran for a year, in exchange for keeping the house secure and in order.  

The last time Andy visited Nyth Bran was in 1978, to sort out his parents belongings. He was living in barracks in Germany and had little room to take anything back with him. Consequently, a lot of items and all of the furniture was left behind. After Andy’s friend moved out, a solicitor arranged the sale of Nyth Bran. It was then sold to the Sloan family, after they fell in love with its location. 

 

Such a sad, sad story. I especially feel for Jane, being cut off from Whay and never seeing him again.

The one thing I still hope to find out is why Nyth Bran is in such a sorry state today.  

Photo by Mark Palombella Hart (2023)

 My thanks once again to Dylan Arnold for letting me have this information.

 

---

Authors on the map

 

I thought it would be fun to see where 'my' authors lived and here they are! It is interesting to see how popular some parts of the UK are. The map will be updated every now and again.

Please note all locations are approximate. As I have only blogged about a few American, Australian and Canadian authors I have not made maps of those countries yet.