THE Corpse Way stretches, lugubriously, the 12 miles from Keld to Grinton, in Swaledale. Since Grinton was the nearest consecrated ground, 18th Century mourners would carry the body in a wicker basket, periodically stopping for liquid refreshment. The funeral procession could take an awfully long time.

It’s appropriate that we’re within a muffled peal of the Corpse Way when the Lady of the House announces that she just wants to die, though these days the Co-op makes rather more efficacious arrangements.

We’re pioneer passengers on the Little White Bus. Given to travel sickness, she is not a good bus traveller. In truth she’s never looked so poorly – proper poorly, as my old dad used to say – since that day she was whipped, woebegone, into the Friarage.

“I’m just concentrating on the scenery,” she says but, misheard, is thought to have said that she’s concentrating on the ceiling. It would have been a spectacular example of projectile vomiting.

THE Little White Bus, which should not be confused with the Little White Bull – Tommy Steele, No 6, 1959 – began operations a week back yesterday, once again linking the joyous length of Swaledale with the more prosaic world below.

We’re awaiting the first bus out, the 8.55 from Richmond, delayed slightly, but sufficiently for us to notice a sign in the window of the Golden Lion. “Dogs welcome, but children must be kept on a lead,” it says. There’s one other passenger.

The bus is as new as the route is, driver Chris Howarth accompanied up the dale by both pilot – as in river pilot – and co-pilot. All they need is a hostess, preferably bearing Taylor’s pies and a pint of Strongarm with which to wash them down.

For those not in need of a couple of Kwells it’s very comfortable, very modern. Even the bells seem state-of-the-art. “We’re like kids at Christmas playing with our new toys,” says one of the pilots.

Jingle bells, then.

Mr Howarth proves amiable and engaging, telling some other passengers on the return journey that he’s also a medium. A subsequent check shows that he has a very interesting internet presence, too. On the journey up Swaledale he couldn’t be jollier.

Chris Howarth is a happy medium.

WE’RE in Keld exactly an hour after leaving Richmond, the Lady looking rather like a green adolescent who’s had one go too many on the super waltzer in an attempt to impress a new date.

Always glorious up there, it’s more splendid yet in the daff dancing, lamb larking spring. Perhaps the only surprise is that they haven’t turned out the Reeth Silver Band to greet us, so great the promotional possibilities for this wonderful part of the world.

The village notice board advertises for Little White Bus drivers, paid and voluntary, with MIDAS training – whatever that may be – but perhaps not the golden touch. Whilst the offered £7 40 an hour may be little above the minimum wage, of course, it’s still an awful lot more than nowt.

We walk down dale through the hamlet of Angram, periodically overtaken by the Royal Air Force wing dipping down the dale. The Lady announces that rag man is an anagram of Angram. Clearly she’s feeling better.

At Thwaite – Old Norse for “meeting place of the Vikings”, we’re told – we take coffee and biscuits in the Kearton Tea Room and then on to Muker to explore some of the paved field paths thereabouts.

The National Park notice board says that they’re wheelchair accessible, that august authority presumably having found a way to get a wheelchair through a Yorkshire squeeze stile. The answer is not immediately obvious.

The Farmers Arms has a bright-blazing log fire, a cheery barmaid and a pint of Buttertubs Bitter. The Lady further aids recuperation with a hot rosehip and rhubarb cordial followed yet more exotically by a sour cherry, red grape and hibiscus cordial which smells like Lowcock’s cherryade.

The Little White Bus starts the return journey from outside the pub at 1 35pm. One of us is looking forward to it no end.

*The Little White Bus is a community service open to all, running every day during the spring and summer except Sundays and bank holidays. It can offer wheelchair access given a day’s notice and senior bus passes are valid. Details and timetables on dalesbus.org

FROM community bus to community magazine. The admirable little Reeth and District Gazette – “free yet priceless,” it says on the cover – has been recording the greatly limited public opening hours at Leyburn police station.

It’s an operational station, says the North Yorkshire police website, and officers will usually be out on patrol. The site also notes, however, that the station will have a front counter service from Friday June 4 to Monday June 7.

“I assume,” writes editor Martin Cluderay, “that this refers to the Tour de France weekend last year. Obviously they are too busy fighting crime to update the website.”

...AND finally, John Heslop in Durham notes the column’s discomfort with the promiscuous use of the prefix “pre” – not least the Echo report that the Archbishop of York had read a pre-prepared statement.

“When making a speech,” John writes, “rather than reading the speech word for word, one may use pared-down notes that cover the essential points. A prepared statement, therefore, may be one that has been pared down to essential phrases. So maybe in a pre-prepared statement, the essential phrases have been pared down to key words.”

Pre-warned, the column’s now taking a week off to recover.

Carroll singing

The Northern Echo:

RONNIE CARROLL, the crooner who died last week, may just be remembered for other reasons – as one of 14 candidates in the 2004 Hartlepool by-election.

“In the constituency that voted for the monkey they might see Ronnie as the organ grinder,” said the multi-coloured George Weiss, his election agent.

Born Ronald Cleghorn, Britain’s Eurovision Song Contest representative twice in the early 1960s, Carroll had become something of a serial election candidate. His parties included the Emerald Rainbow Islands Dream Ticket (Uxbridge 1997) and the Make Politicians History Party at the Haltemprice election of 2008. Other candidates included Monster Raving Loony, Mad Cow-girl, the Church of Militant Elvis and Miss Great Britain.

Usually he tried to persuade the electorate not to support him at all, thus entering the Guinness Book as the first person not to record a single vote. Spoilsports declined to cooperate. “There’s nothing worse than aiming low and missing,” said Carroll.

At Hartlepool his papers were signed by residents of Burbank Court sheltered accommodation. He came 13th out of 14, mustered 45 votes, declined to make a speech at the declaration but sang Danny Boy instead. “A charged atmosphere slipped into the surreal,” The Guardian reported.

At the forthcoming general election he was to have stood as the Euro Vision candidate in Hampstead and Kilburn. By a quirk of electoral law, his name will remain on the ballot paper, meaning that he could still win.

It does seem unlikely, however.