Sister Cities Join Ripon in Birthday Celebration

RIPON, England — An almond blossom festival in California, the birthplace of the Republican Party in Wisconsin and a young English lord who sponsors walking tours of the Yorkshire Dales from his 32,000-acre estate--all share ties to this cathedral city that will close the yearlong celebration of its 1,100th birthday on New Year’s Eve.

Presiding over the anniversary celebration, which has included a luncheon with Her Majesty the Queen Mother, has been His Worship the Mayor who drives a taxi when he isn’t wearing his ceremonial gold chain of office.

Mayors and visiting delegations from the almond city of Ripon, Calif., and the college town of Ripon, Wis., where the Republican Party was born, have also been here to celebrate the birthday of their English namesake and sister city.

Annual golf tournaments will bind the ties between the Yorkshire and California Ripons, and the lord’s walking tours agency will take English clients to California’s Big Sur while inviting Californians to enjoy low-cost walking tours of the English dales.

The president of Ripon College in Wisconsin has conferred an honorary degree upon his counterpart here at the College of Ripon and York St. John as the beginning of an educational exchange program.

Anonymity Preferred

In this Yorkshire countryside a famous author who prefers to be an anonymous veterinarian created the basis for a popular TV series with such best-sellers as “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and “All Creatures Great and Small,” written under the pseudonym of James Herriot.

Ripon is a gateway to the Yorkshire Dales, which are bright and glowing valleys in contrast to the brooding beauty of the Yorkshire Moors.

Ripon has tales enough to fill a Herriot novel, as my wife Elfriede and I have discovered after arriving here during our wanderings along the byways of England with novelist James A. Michener and his wife Mari.

Every evening for 1,100 years the City Hornblower has sounded his horn at the Ripon Market Place. He holds a position of honor, and there are backup horn blowers so the continuity is never broken.

In the early centuries the sound of the horn was a stern reminder to potential felons that the Wakeman, as the mayor was known, would provide security to householders during the night and that the perpetrator of any crime would be pursued mercilessly. For this security every householder paid an annual toll of 2 pence for each door to his house.

Tranquil Herriot Country

In this anniversary year Mayor Roland Simpson’s small Yorkshire city is a tranquil bit of Herriot country. The motto on the town hall reminds the community: “Except ye Lord keep ye city, ye Wakeman waketh in vain.”

St. Peter’s Cathedral of Ripon, older than the city charter, paraphrases the town hall motto by reminding town folk that true security comes from recognizing that “The Lord is here.” St. Wilfrid consecrated the cathedral on June 29, AD 672.

A stone from the crypt of the Yorkshire cathedral is set in the altar of St. Peter’s Church in Ripon, Wis. In the early 19th Century immigrants from Ripon in England settled in the Wisconsin community and named it after the town they had left.

During its early years Ripon, Wis., was a utopian socialist experiment that prospered into a free-enterprise community. In 1854 a business and civic leader, friend of New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, triggered the founding of what was to be the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln in a little white schoolhouse, to unite the country against the spread of slavery from the South.

This was a story my wife Elfriede and I shared with the Micheners here in Yorkshire. We had met as students at Ripon College in Wisconsin.

A Namesake City

Ripon, Calif., on California 99 between Modesto and Stockton, was founded in the late 19th Century by a settler from Ripon, Wis. During America’s Bicentennial year of 1976, the Ripon in Yorkshire sent its mayor and a delegation to the Almond Blossom Festival in Ripon, Calif. Replicas of the Hornblower’s Charter Horn from the year AD 886 were presented as Bicentennial gifts to both the California and Wisconsin Ripons. All three cities range in population between 6,000 and 8,000.

The English city stands on the edge of the Great Plane of York, at the confluence of the rivers Ure, Skell and Laver, about halfway between London and Edinburgh. Medieval streets leading from the Market Place have remained virtually unchanged since the 13th Century. A 90-foot obelisk has been a visual focal point of the square since 1781.

Architecture around the square ranges from the 12th Century to the Georgian character of the town hall. Treasures on display in the Town Hall include the AD 886 horn, encased in velvet.

A walk through the cathedral could take many quiet hours. The magnificent east window, along the choir section rebuilt in 1286, draws artists from all over Europe. The choir stalls, carved with mythical creatures of the animal world and finished in 1494, could have influenced the imagination of Lewis Carrol, creator of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”; his father was canon at the cathedral.

Practice Swinging

Ripon golfers who play exchange matches with their namesake city in California practice their swings on one of the most scenic courses on this side of the Atlantic, overlooking the old city and the River Ure, winding its way through wild hawthorne. All three rivers tempt fishermen. The Ripon Racecourse has staged its Wakeman Handicap and Hornblower Stakes since 1713.

Ripon Spa Hotel is a country house five minutes’ walk from Market Place. The 27 rooms of the Unicorn have served travelers for more than 400 years, and were remodeled in 1984. Walks in any direction from town center lead to small Georgian inns and to restaurants with names such as Hornblower, Old Deanery, Blackfriars, Upper Loft.

Four miles from town, in the dale of the River Skell, are the grand remains of Fountains Abbey, founded by Cistercian monks in 1132, and now a National Trust property. These largest monastic ruins in Britain contrast dramatically with the Georgian gardens and ornamental temples of adjacent Studley Royal.

Ripon is part of the driving and walking tours offered through the Yorkshire Dales and the heart of the James Herriot countryside by Lord Willie Peel and his associate Terry Parker, who has written two books on the English countryside and lectured widely in the United States and Canada.

Lord Peel is the great-great-grandson of Prime Minister Robert Peel, who established the police force in Ireland in 1817 and as home secretary founded the London police force in 1829, hence the nicknames of Bobbie or Peeler for a London police officer.

Peel and Parker are co-directors of Dales Centre Ltd., a recreational touring company and its companion R+1 Country Tours Ltd. In the spirit of James Herriot they promise to introduce you to all creatures and creations great and small around their countryside. A tour can include lunch with Lord and Lady Peel and their two children at their Gunnerside estate in the vast family acreage of the dales.

“Walking in Style” tours include a seven-day Dales Discovery around Wharfedale in North Yorkshire. From a base at the Wilson Arms country hotel, each day is a leisurely walk of about eight miles with an experienced leader. You meet the local folk, watch the sheep and the sheep dogs. After dinner there are illustrated talks on the history and culture of the dales.

Discovery Experience

The Dales Discovery experience is priced at $460 per person. For information on Dales Centre and Country Tours, contact their California representative, Reg Pickett, 3387 Lubich Drive, Mountain View, Calif. 94040. Telephone (415) 967-0232, or toll free (800) 443-8550.

Farmhouses and peaceful villages appear along with abbeys in valleys marked by stepping stones across small rivers. Sheep graze the velvety turf within stone walls that seem to create feudal domains.

Our young guide Richard Ralph, a scholar who has specialized in the history of the countryside and has taken time to meet the people who live here, took us for morning tea and homemade pastries to a farmhouse that has long been in the Lambert family in Kettlewell.

Barbara Lambert explained that declining dairy revenues prompted their family to change from cattle to sheep and to help the short-term cash flow by setting up bedrooms and two cottages for guests, who also use the family living room and can enjoy Barbara’s breakfasts. The rate is 8.5 per person per night, or about $13. We could understand why guests who stop for a night often stay for a week before wandering up the Dales road marked B6160 toward West Burton.

Herriot describes West Burton as “possibly the most beautiful village in all England.”

Visitors are encouraged to create their own “best of” dales and villages. Or you may feel as we did that the small bridge and brook of a village such as Appletreewick are part of a setting that creates its own poem.

We stayed two nights at the Devonshire Arms at Bolton Abbey in Dales National Park. The Bolton Abbey Estate is still part of the family trust set up by the 10th Duke of Devonshire. The present duchess has supervised the restoration of the old coaching inn that welcomes guests. The accommodations are comfortable, not grand, and the dining is superb. Doubles are 60.50, about $90. The telephone number in England is (07) 567-1441.