Further on, the landscape changed. Stone walls gave way to hawthorn hedges, cattle replaced sheep and fallow meadow were tilled and sawn. We had entered the Vale of York, the long flat wooded plain between Swaledale and the Cleveland Hills.

The rich farmland wasn’t solely good for cash crops; it was also a winemakers’ field of plenty with wide swaths of elder bush hedges, heavy with purple berries waiting to be harvested for fermentation.