The Pudding Tree.

A very interesting walk round Burley- in - Wharfedale with the Pudsey Ramblers. A place we have visited many times, and in fact it was where Mr C and I first met in 1961 at a Youth Fellowship weekend.
However there are many parts we haven’t visited before, and it was a lovely walk which went along the Sun Lane nature reserve, down to the river by the weir where we watched a couple and their dig cross over the steppingstones, which looked very slippery to me.
Our lunch stop was in the delightful little garden named “ Pudding Tree Gardens “.
Intrigued by the name I found out it goes back centuries.
There used to be a feast in Burley every 7 years, when the Burley Great Pudding was made.
It’s said about 30 stone of flour and an equal quantity of dried fruit were kneeled into a huge pudding, and though boiled through day and night, the huge pudding was not sufficiently cooked in the inside.
Nevertheless, in this state it was distributed from a platform at the foot of the tree near the Malt Shovel Hotel ( now apartments) .
The last pudding was served from under the spreading branches of the tree in 1787.
Unfortunately the tree is no more.

We then continued along the river, across the golf course, and along an old railway line back to our friend Ian’s house, where we didn’t have Burley pudding, but tea, biscuits, and hot cross buns. Very much enjoyed by us all after what was a lovely walk on a beautiful, mainly sunny, day.