megustaleer
14th July 2008, 06:54 AM
Running For The Hills was this month’s read from my postal book group. At first glance I thought it was one of the ‘Life In The Sun’ books that followed Peter Mayle’s A Year In Provence, then after a look at the back cover I thought it was going to be another Misery Memoir.
As it turned out, although there were similarities to both those genre, it was quite different. - life on a Welsh hill farm is far from Life In The Sun’, and Horatio Clare’s childhood, although involving the break-up of his parents’ marriage, poverty and pretty harsh living conditions, was happy.
The book is a memoir of this childhood but also reaches back to the time before his birth, into an account of his parents' lives based on their diaries.
Jenny and Robert Clare were both journalists when they met, working in London, and after a period of dating he moved in with her. At some point after this Jenny revealed her dream for the future - a rural idyll, far from the rat-race of London. Robert was less than enthusiastic, but he loved Jenny and she was clearly determined, so they started the long quest for a weekend retreat near the Welsh border. Then Jenny found a broken down hill farm tucked into the edge of the Black Mountains and about to be auctioned. She fell head over heels in love with it.
It was in very poor condition, several fields away from the road, dug into the side of the mountain, running with damp, and water had to be fetched from a spring.
So, at least five years before it started to become fashionable to buy a little smallholding in Wales, Jenny and Robert jumped in at the deep end.
They started off as week-enders, spending every spare minute there caring for the sheep and repairing the fabric of the place. Robert was meticulous and thorough, doing everything - literally ‘by the book’. Jenny was romantic, intuitive and bursting with enthusiasm, caring passionately about the farm and the livestock.
They married and had two little boys while living this dual life. Gradually Jenny spent more and more time at the farm, and less in London They tried living in Wales full time, but the farm was a money pit, and Robert became more and more depressed about it, and about Jenny’s insistence that they would manage.
Over several years they tried variously living at the farm, in London, or commuting between the two but none of it worked, so eventually the marriage fell apart and Jenny moved permanently to the farm. The boys lived with their mother, Robert visited, and the boys would spend holidays with him in London.
The life on the farm was very harsh. The only regular help Jenny had was a retired farmer in his seventies, with visits from the shearing gang or neighbours at haymaking (after they had done their own) and Horatio as he got older. They had next to no money and the children were encouraged to eat huge helpings of their free school lunch to make up for the meagre rations at home.
From the children’s point of view it was a wonderful life, having the freedom of the mountain and having a passion for nature fostered by their mother, but I found Jenny's selfishness in her single-minded attachment to the farm quite unbelievable. It destroyed her marriage to a man who adored her, deprived the boys of their father’s company for much of the time, and often exposed them to frightening and dangerous situations. I disliked Jenny for that, and could have disliked the book because of it.
Fortunately the emphasis is on the life at the farm, rather than the unhappy marriage, so overall it is an enjoyable book. The descriptions of the farm, farming practices (good and bad) and the wonderful scenery of the Black Mountains are vivid, and evoked my own memories of rural South Wales.
I used to holiday with a friend (a widow whose children were adults) who lived in a similar situation on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. She didn’t have a farm to run, but every word describing the damp house tucked into the mountainside, the precarious track across two fields (and the oil tanker in trouble), the spring for fetching water, being snowed in, the sheep handling (which went on in the yard in front of her cottage) rang so many happy bells for me that I found that aspect of the book totally delightful.
As it turned out, although there were similarities to both those genre, it was quite different. - life on a Welsh hill farm is far from Life In The Sun’, and Horatio Clare’s childhood, although involving the break-up of his parents’ marriage, poverty and pretty harsh living conditions, was happy.
The book is a memoir of this childhood but also reaches back to the time before his birth, into an account of his parents' lives based on their diaries.
Jenny and Robert Clare were both journalists when they met, working in London, and after a period of dating he moved in with her. At some point after this Jenny revealed her dream for the future - a rural idyll, far from the rat-race of London. Robert was less than enthusiastic, but he loved Jenny and she was clearly determined, so they started the long quest for a weekend retreat near the Welsh border. Then Jenny found a broken down hill farm tucked into the edge of the Black Mountains and about to be auctioned. She fell head over heels in love with it.
It was in very poor condition, several fields away from the road, dug into the side of the mountain, running with damp, and water had to be fetched from a spring.
So, at least five years before it started to become fashionable to buy a little smallholding in Wales, Jenny and Robert jumped in at the deep end.
They started off as week-enders, spending every spare minute there caring for the sheep and repairing the fabric of the place. Robert was meticulous and thorough, doing everything - literally ‘by the book’. Jenny was romantic, intuitive and bursting with enthusiasm, caring passionately about the farm and the livestock.
They married and had two little boys while living this dual life. Gradually Jenny spent more and more time at the farm, and less in London They tried living in Wales full time, but the farm was a money pit, and Robert became more and more depressed about it, and about Jenny’s insistence that they would manage.
Over several years they tried variously living at the farm, in London, or commuting between the two but none of it worked, so eventually the marriage fell apart and Jenny moved permanently to the farm. The boys lived with their mother, Robert visited, and the boys would spend holidays with him in London.
The life on the farm was very harsh. The only regular help Jenny had was a retired farmer in his seventies, with visits from the shearing gang or neighbours at haymaking (after they had done their own) and Horatio as he got older. They had next to no money and the children were encouraged to eat huge helpings of their free school lunch to make up for the meagre rations at home.
From the children’s point of view it was a wonderful life, having the freedom of the mountain and having a passion for nature fostered by their mother, but I found Jenny's selfishness in her single-minded attachment to the farm quite unbelievable. It destroyed her marriage to a man who adored her, deprived the boys of their father’s company for much of the time, and often exposed them to frightening and dangerous situations. I disliked Jenny for that, and could have disliked the book because of it.
Fortunately the emphasis is on the life at the farm, rather than the unhappy marriage, so overall it is an enjoyable book. The descriptions of the farm, farming practices (good and bad) and the wonderful scenery of the Black Mountains are vivid, and evoked my own memories of rural South Wales.
I used to holiday with a friend (a widow whose children were adults) who lived in a similar situation on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. She didn’t have a farm to run, but every word describing the damp house tucked into the mountainside, the precarious track across two fields (and the oil tanker in trouble), the spring for fetching water, being snowed in, the sheep handling (which went on in the yard in front of her cottage) rang so many happy bells for me that I found that aspect of the book totally delightful.