Page 1 of Atticus Arnott's Great Adventure
Chapter One
‘Don’t let the old man in…’
Atticus Arnott didn’t want to let the old man in but had no idea how to stop him. After almost forty years of marriage, life without Clara seemed pointless.
‘What would you make of it now, eh, Clara?’ Atticus looked towards the sky. ‘I don’t know what’s going on up there, but the world seems to have gone mad down here.’
Perched on a drystone wall, Atticus adjusted the brim of his weathered cowboy hat and gazed out over his property. Below, a cluster of stone buildings nestled in the valley, blending seamlessly with the patchwork of fields surrounding his farm. With a quiet grunt, he leaned on his crook and dug into his overcoat pocket to pull out a treat. ‘There you go, girl,’ he said softly as Ness, his scruffy Collie, wagged her tail.
His thoughts ran to the countless miles he’d tramped across the fells surrounding the farm. Happy days with Ness bounding along at his side, her eyes bright withanticipation, ready to spring into action and skilfully herd. But now the fields stood silent, and the gentle bleat of his Herdwick sheep faded into memory, their echoes as faint and ghostly as Clara’s voice.
Atticus had a deep connection to the land, having farmed it all his life. His respect for the heritage of his Herdwick sheep had been passed down through generations of the Arnott family, and as a young boy, he’d learnt the skills specific to Cumbria’s farming challenges from his father and grandfather. The rural lifestyle suited him and Clara as young newlyweds, especially when they inherited the farm.
‘We did alright,’ Atticus murmured as he plodded along.
The modest income from breeding and selling his sheep enabled them to raise a family, though neither Mungo, his son, nor Mary, his twin, showed any interest in continuing the shepherding life.
Reaching an old wooden kissing gate, Atticus paused, his gaze lingering over the weathered slats he’d replaced countless times over the years. This was the place where he’d proposed to Clara, just eighteen years old, during a Sunday afternoon walk.
‘You were as beautiful as the sunrise over the fells,’ he said softly to the sky streaked with rhubarb hues, recalling Clara’s fiery red hair, sparkling emerald eyes, and the freckles that danced across her cheeks. When he first kissed her, her lips were as soft as freshly fallen snow.
Atticus stroked the smooth, familiar gate and let out a long, wistful sigh. Five years ago,at sixty-five, Clara’s heart attack had been sudden and fatal. One moment, she was busy on the farm; the next, she was at the kitchen table clutching her chest.
‘Don’t let the old man in…’ she’d whispered with her final breath to her heartbroken husband. Words borrowed from her favourite actor, Clint Eastwood, in a film they’d watched countless times together.
Atticus pushed open the gate, and Ness darted ahead.
‘Ah, Clara, we never did get to take that dream holiday, did we?’ Atticus murmured, his gaze drifting skyward. ‘Spain seems like another world now.’
He remembered how they’d planned to celebrate a wedding anniversary with a month-long escape to Spain, and studied countless brochures, imagining their days on the sunlit shores of the Costa Blanca. Now, that dream lay shattered, nothing more than a memory of what might have been.
After Clara’s death, Mungo pieced together the fragments of his father’s shattered life. Watching Atticus decline, Mungo made the difficult decision to leave his thriving career with an IT company and relocate his family to Barn Hill Farm.
‘So many changes,’ Atticus mumbled as he looked down at the valley.
In the distance, he could see the market town of Eden, where the spire of the Church of St. Lawrence reached into the clear blue sky. On the gentle slope, the converted farm buildings clustered around a main house. As he studied his farm, Atticus thought of Mungo’s wildly ambitious plans for Barn Hill Farm’s future.
To Atticus’s horror, they didn’t include breeding and raising sheep.
Mungo’s vision of a café and farm shop, followed by a caravan site and glamping area, was, in his opinion, the only way forward if the farm was to support everyone.
‘But what about the sheep?’ Atticus had argued.
‘They must go. We can’t survive if things stay the same,’ Mungo reasoned. ‘The location of Barn Hill Farm is perfect. There’s a main road on our doorstep, which is a thoroughfare to the Lakes, and we’ll be a destination for locals and holidaymakers, who pour into the area all year round.’
In his heart, Atticus knew that Mungo had been right. If changes didn’t happen, the farm couldn’t sustain them all. Atticus wasn’t getting any younger, and Mungo wasn’t prepared to miss out on an enterprising opportunity and see his inheritance go to waste.
But losing his beloved Herdwick sheep had been painful for Atticus.
Mungo’s progressive strategy was quickly passed by the local planning department, which supported his ideas and welcomed opportunities for employment and tourism. The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs secured him a large grant. Atticus’s sheep stock had been reduced to a mere handful of cute-looking animals, penned for children to feed and pet. The black lambs were endearing to the visitors, but they didn’t quite quell Atticus’s sadness about losing most of his flock.
As Atticus trudged on, Ness ran ahead, tail wagging, nose glued to the ground. At seventy, Atticus had lost hisget-up-and-go. It had ‘gotten up and gone’ with Clara’s death, and he had neither the will nor the need to find it.
Reaching a rocky outcrop, Atticus paused, his eyes fixed on the bustling car park surrounding his home. It was packed with visitors eager to enjoy a hearty breakfast in the café before stocking up on provisions at the farm shop. His eyes scanned the yard, landing on Mungo’s wife, Helen, as she emerged from the farmhouse. Crossing the yard to the café, she deftly tied on an apron and gathered her dark hair into a ponytail. He thought of her scones – plump, fluffy, and as delicious as her cakes. Renowned throughout the region, they earned top awards at the county show.
As his granddaughter came into sight, Atticus gave a half-smile, watching Eliza bounce alongside her mum. At thirteen, Eliza was younger than her brother Jake, all gangly limbs and a mop of curly black hair. Her freckled face bore a striking resemblance to her Grandma Clara’s, and Atticus felt a swell of pride for the girl, who pot-washed and cleared tables at weekends to add to her pocket money – funds she spent on newfangled gadgets that left Atticus baffled. He cherished the time they shared when Eliza came home from school; those moments were a bright spot in his day.
‘Grandad, you need to get with it,’ Eliza told Atticus as she shrugged off her blazer and threw her bag onto the floor. ‘If you had a laptop, you could be searching the internet. It’s like having an encyclopaedia at your fingertips.’
