Order of Little Bedlam

The day before we left York, we visited the barley shed or rice barn or some such thing and Yorvick, the Viking museum. In the former, a reconstructed 1300s York house, we learn that a pig was tried and hanged for injuring a child and saw a family seal with a depiction of a squirrel and the Latin inscription “I crake notis” (I crack nuts). Not without a sense of humour, our forefathers (? perhaps, I’ve never done the DNA thing). Yorvick is perhaps designed for younger clients with its Disney-like ride through a Viking village; however, it’s constructed on an actual excavated village 6m below street level, the mechatronic people extrapolated from Viking skeletons and the houses and wares built to reflect findings from the dig. We were distracted by the grunts, groans and looks of consternation from a robot Viking taking a dump, until we saw the size of the fossilised Viking faeces they’d unearthed – proper barium meal, break-it-up-with-a-coat-hanger-to-flush, quarter pounder it was. Be lucky if he survived it – perhaps he didn’t. It was a good exhibition. A couple of pints at the Golden Fleece and the Three Tuns, being careful not to disturb the ghosts lurking there, and we were done.

The end of our time in York heralded the end of our planned northern England anticlockwise tour and rather than making our way back down the coast as we’d pondered, we’ve opted to stay the full final week in Stamford; it’s a lovely old town, it’s central to places like Bletchley and Cambridge that we may yet check out and, we know it – so the compulsion to spend every minute site-seeing is reduced, giving some much needed space for admin (I need to do a BAS), Camino planning and the like. York to Stamford takes just over 2 hours, and we dine at our prior favourite Inn, the Tobie Norris.

As determined as I was to dive into the exciting world of Business Activity Statements (especially when they’re overdue), the sky was blue, the air was wonderfully calm and full of the scents of spring and – admin sucks – so we closed the door behind us, stepped out onto the cobbled alleyway off Stamford High Street and headed off for a walk through Burghley estate. It was a proper T-shirter, twenty-five degrees, and an absolute delight after all the cold and wet.

Happily, the house is open, and our two-hour morning walk becomes a wonderful day trip exploring the house’s private gardens and exceptional works of art (and avoiding admin). Interestingly, John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter (1648–1700), master of Burghley, also founded the “Order of Little Bedlam”, which claimed Vanbrugh, the architect of Castle Howard, as a member. The club required that members provide a self-portrait (a significant financial hurdle in the 1600s) and adopt pseudonyms; badger, porcupine, elephant etc. The pseudonyms were to provide members with anonymity and freedom from scandal as they played up at their local Bull and Swan. In a very short space of time, however, locals and Inn staff alike were discussing openly how “Porcupine certainly got shitfaced last night” or “Badger must’ve eaten the pheasant with carrots etc etc.” Locals still know the various lords and gentry by their pseudonyms today! We grab a beer later at the Bull and Swan, missing by only a night, the opportunity to play “Eurovision Drag Bingo”. The Inn menu, perhaps in remembrance of members of the “Order of Little Bedlam,” includes the words of PG Wodehouse; “Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled and blotto”

Rest easy, the BAS has been completed (yesterday), with a short stroll around Stamford thrown in, and today we were able to enjoy Bletchley, a little over an hour from here. We’ve all seen the movie; it was humbling to see the extent of the work they did, unrecognised, to forshorten the war. Interesting and a little whimsical too, to learn of the especially trained ‘spy pigeons’ that were dropped behind enemy lines to bring back vital messages.