About thirty years ago, my mother and I went to England to visit friends from Maine who had moved to North Yorkshire. Their cottage was just outside Whitby, tucked among rolling hills and a vista so broad that it seemed you could see halfway across the country. For me, it was love at first sight, and as our friends very kindly drove us from beautiful spot to beautiful spot, I knew I had found my heart’s home. This was only emphasized by the flowers—even the smallest yard had pots of spilling color—the wonderful tea, and the large number of dogs who were out and about with their people. Finally, England is the home of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and J.R.R. Tolkien, three very different but nonetheless brilliant writers. How could I not fall in love?

For a variety of reasons, it is highly unlikely that I will ever return to England. But I can visit via books (and blogs!), and it was with great pleasure that I read Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling. Bryson is perhaps best known for A Walk in the Woods, which was recently made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte. In the movie, the terrific Emma Thompson played Bryson’s wife, and in real life, Bryson’s wife is indeed English. Because of this, the lucky fellow is actually allowed to live in England—yes, I am envious—and The Road to Little Dribbling is an account of his traveling from one end of Britain to the other, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north. He dubs this route the Bryson Line.

But as to be expected from this lively, discursive writer, Bryson does not exactly follow this straight line. Instead, he zigs and zags his way through Britain, going to Wales, Cornwall, the Lake Distract, North Yorkshire,  Hampshire, and many other places, touching bases with the Bryson Line from time to time. Along the way, he visits museums, walks in the countryside, and drinks a fair amount of beer. Ever curious, Bryson writes about the history of the many places he visits. Then, of course, there is his famous snarkiness—his acerbic observations and crotchets—amusing but fortunately kept in check. For this reader, a little snarkiness goes a long way.

While not without its criticisms—no place, of course, is perfect—The Road to Little Dribbling is in essence a love letter to England, and for Bryson, as for me, the countryside is his greatest love. At the end of the book he writes that he loves England for many reasons, but chiefly because of “the beauty of the countryside. Goodness me, what an achievement….there isn’t a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in than the countryside of Great Britain. It is the world’s largest park, its most perfect accidental garden. I think it may be the British nation’s most glorious achievement.”

So well put and so true. I have decided that The Road to Little Dribbling is a book for the home library—I borrowed it from our town’s library—and I will be putting it on my wish list.

On Sunday, our friends Cheryl and Denny and Judy and Paul came over for homemade apple crisp and talk. As I’ve noted in a previous post, I really love hosting afternoon get-togethers with friends. We have a good-size dining room with an old Victorian table—the original chairs, long gone, were filled with straw—that can easily be expanded to accommodate eight to ten people. However, for me, six is the perfect number for good conversation.

Apple crisp must surely be one of the best desserts to serve at a gathering. It can be made ahead of time, tucked in the refrigerator, and baked forty-five minutes or so before guests arrive. Old apples, a little wrinkled, taste perfectly good, and my blast-furnace oven does a fine bubbling job of baking the crisp. The recipe I use comes from a Craig Claiborne New York Times Cookbook, and I just follow his instructions. If I had made enough  modifications to call the recipe mine, then I would happily share it. But I haven’t.

Then there is the smell of apples, cinnamon, and cloves as they blend and bake. It wafts from the kitchen and drifts to the dining room, and I expect this smell stimulates the appetite. (Let’s just say that it’s a good thing I made plenty for seconds.) So you have warm spiced apples and a crunchy, buttery topping. Perfect, right? Almost. It needs a scoop of vanilla ice cream to slowly melt into the warm mixture. Whipped cream is all right, but to my way of thinking, ice cream is the jewel in the crown, so to speak.

As we sat around the dining room table, we talked about many things, but one topic in particular stuck with me because I’ve been thinking about it lately—the importance of stories and how we all have them.

Judy told of how one day, when her mother was young—this would have been in the 1930s—she came home to find her mother (Judy’s grandmother) sobbing as she did the ironing.

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Judy’s mother asked.

As Judy’s grandmother ironed, she listened to the radio, to an afternoon soap opera, and something sad had happened to one of the characters. Hence the tears.

After hearing this story, I replied, “I think the story gene runs strong in humans. Whatever the medium, we will always have stories. I’m sure of it.”

Everyone nodded, and Cheryl recounted how one Christmas her book group listened to a recording of A Child’s Christmas in Wales read by the great man himself, Dylan Thomas. All the lights were turned off except for the ones on the Christmas tree, and by the sparkling lights they listened to this fine writer read his own words.

“Sounds wonderful,” I said, thinking that I might like to do this next year, but with just Clif and me. (My book group meets at the library, and somehow, it just wouldn’t be the same to do it there.)

“It was,” Cheryl said, smiling as she remembered.

Warm apple crisp, friends around the table, shared stories. Another finest kind of way to spend a winter’s afternoon.