Continuing from yesterdays outing where I set out to visit Mobberley in Cheshire to walk to grave of my late wife Katy, I passed through the village centre and the old traditional graveyard surrounding the church, most of the graves were ancient and packed tightly together, I knew the mountaineer George Mallory who died on Everest in 1924 had been born here so I looked around for evidence of his family, one of the first graves I spotted had an amusing message shown in the first image, I don’t suppose he thought his wife would follow him so quickly. Round the back just by chance I found what I thought to be the grave of Mallory’s father, I had forgotten he was the son of the parish rector. When looked at the photo later I realised this was his grandfather and the grave of his father Hubert Mallory is the one behind. I was amazed there does not seem to be any reference to George the man who may have been the first person to stand on the highest point on earth who made the fatal mistake of not getting back, anywhere in the village. I continued on for a good while forgetting what a sprawling place Mobberley is, I had an excellent lunch and a pint in a pub and continued on to Graveyard Farm. It is the site of an ancient Quaker burial ground and a modern woodland one, Katy was buried here in 2005 and our best friend Julia head to head in 2008, I don’t believe in an afterlife but I like to think their spirits if that is the right word are down there chatting putting the world to rights. The Quaker plot is sad, unloved and overgrown there is no more than three or four gravestones still to be seen, one day the ground will swallow them all up unless someone digs them out again.
On the way back I was taken by all the warning signs on the gates of the large country houses, from the unimaginative ‘trespassers will be prosecuted’ to my favorites ‘slow children and animals’ and ‘Warning if the guard dogs are loose stay in your car’ it made me glad I live in France.
andymcneephoto 