IT'S been a big couple of weeks for Hawes.

First Iveson's electronics emporium managed to give my dad a cracking deal on a fridge freezer - £10 pounds cheaper than anywhere on-line. The secret apparently is the shop's vast storage space under the cobbled streets, meaning they can buy much bigger quantities than the likes of e-buyer and Argos.

Elsewhere in the town, Prince Charles visited the Wensleydale Creamery to see cheese being hand-crafted by skilled artisans who come from across Eastern Europe.

Pictures of the future king scoffing a bit of the good stuff while wearing overalls bearing the dairy's logo made the front page of The Times.

You can't buy that kind of publicity, unless of course you have Fergie's mobile number.

In other news, we went for a pleasant walk along the river from Easby Abbey to Richmond this week. There was a very strange middle-aged, well-dressed woman loitering in the car park both on our departure and return. The woman seemed anxious and kept looking down the path.

It was suggested she was a holidaymaker staying in a cottage and was waiting for other guests to return from a walk.

However, I have a theory that she was actually the ghost of the Little Drummer Boy's mum who was last heard heading out this way.

For those who don't know the story, a group of soldiers found the start of a tunnel under the castle keep a while back.

Too big themselves, they selected (bullied) the smallest member of the troop - a little drummer boy - to go down the tunnel. They then listened safely above ground to the drumming which led towards Easby but then stopped abruptly. The boy was never seen again and the soldiers were very sheepish.

The boy has his own legend, but nobody thinks about his mum. "You told him to do what? Pass me that drumstick.."

Finally, after last week's tenuous links between the Dales and D-Day it's been pointed out by several readers that tanks were waterproofed in Gayle in readiness for the invasion before being tested in Gayle Beck. The tanks were a big success and therefore the Yorkshire Dales played a pivotal role in preventing the world falling into tyranny.