There are events you look forward to for weeks, or months, which fail - - by miles or millimeters - - to measure up to expectation.

Then there are events like this one.

OD's folk dance group, Great Meadows Morris and Sword, found out more than a year ago that they would be going to the World Sword Spectacular in Whitby, England. There followed months of anticipation, preparation, angst and, not-so-incidentally, fundraising, notably via events such as this and this.

Until, on May 26, we gathered at Logan Airport to finally, finally get this journey started. Rather uneventful trip from home and check-in, whatever the post-9/11 security changes, and we waited at the gate, getting up about every five minutes to welcome enthusiastically another Great Meadows member (So enthusiastically, in fact, that some staff person strongly suggested the kids might do well to congregate in an adjacent empty lounge-like area where they would not incommode other passengers.)

The over-night plane ride to Manchester was a sweetly amusing fest of seat-changing and (mostly) quiet conversation among our young charges. You'd look across the aisle and find three sleepers cuddled up together, two of them only a half-hour before seated in completely different locations.

I watched the in-flight movie, "Calendar Girls," tried to read a little and then - - abruptly realizing we were changing time zones - - belatedly tried to get in some sleep before landing. Didn't work much, so I joined the procession of sleepy-heads through Passport Control and thence out onto Baggage Retrieval, where one of the musical instruments was being put to good use.

At some length, we got our rental vans and separated into two parties. My co-pilot and fellow parent chaperone was accordionist supreme and genial live-wire Tom Pixton, who showed great propensity to shake off jet lag and navigate our vehicle across the M56s and A1036s.

With considerable effort, and confusion (a passerby's advice that we stop in the "university library" to ask for directions became an object of some derision), we made our way into York and parked at the famous Black Swan Pub, namesake of a top-flight England rapper-sword team (more about them later), for lunch and general settling-in.

We spent the rest of the afternoon toddling around York, which proved to be a good way of yanking ourselves into the here-and-now and staving off the need to sleep. And, oh yes, York is a lovely place, massive cathedral and progressively narrower streets.

Late afternoon, we were on our way again, into the North Yorkshire moors and past the massive Hole of Horcum (I couldn't help but paraphrase in my mind Richard Nixon's comment about the Great Wall of China: "It is indeed a great hole.") and the Fylingdales RAF facility, with its rather ominous-looking tower.

But as we neared our destination, something far more bucolic and endearing caught our eye: sheep, roaming around, and across, the roads with nary a fence in sight. So someone started a chorus of "Ca' the Yowes" and we made our way into the splendidly pastoral village of Goathland, which became something akin to a second home to us for the next few days.

We pulled into the parking lot of the parish hall, our crash pad for the night, attracting the attention of a group of schoolkids playing on the lawn. A plainly excited boy of perhaps 8 or 9 came up and asked, in that engaging Yorkshire accent we came to love so well, "Ah yoo th' sord dances?"

"I'm not," I replied, "but all those kids in the vans are."

We unpacked, greeted our bunkmates for the night, fellow 'Mericans the Gay Blades, and arranged our cots and beddings. By this time, several of the Great Meadows guys were playing soccer with the Goathland kids.

And then, of course, what else to do but go downapub, in this case the Inn on the Moor. We met up with some of the Sword Spectacular organizers as well as members and supporters of Goathland's longstanding longsword team, the Ploughstots. This is not a revival side: They've been around for generations, and if you're a boy in Goathland chances are you'll be on the "Juniors," as were some of the young socc-sorry, football players we encountered. (Reciting from a Web page now) Ploughstots, incidentally, take their name from the tradition of taking a plough round the village for good luck after first blessing it; "stots" is a dialect word for the bullocks which used to pull it. They still perform this tradition today. Their pink or sky blue tunics are said to represent the political persuasions -- Whig or Tory -- of the households they were visiting.

So there was a little bit of music outside, with some of the GMMS kids, then music inside with the Two Toms (Kruskal and Pixton), and then I headed off to bed.

* * *

but not sleep, at least not a goodly portion of the night. This was to be a recurring pattern most all this trip: I had a lot of trouble shutting down, what with recounting all the fun of the day and anticipating events of the next. But then I would wake up at my usual time, in the 5:30-6:30 bloc, and see no point in trying to sleep further.

So on this first morning, having tried and failed miserably to figure out how the hot water in the shower was supposed to work (and this was in the Ladies room, mind you, since I completely overlooked the location for the shower in the Gents.), I decided to amble through Goathland and check out the railway station.

Ah yes, the Goathland Railway Station: the location for Hogsmeade in the "Harry Potter" movies, among others, and a lovely bit of architecture in its own right.

Strolling through Goathland, meanwhile, I learned - - just by looking in the store windows - - that the village also is the setting for a BBC-TV series "Heartbeat," which apparently has yet to make its way to PBS stations (pleased I was to see that Geoffrey "Onslow" Hughes was among the cast). It was then that I caught sight of a GMMSer approaching me, who asked what I was doing and where I was off to. I explained, and she asked if I'd like some company.

It was a lovely bit of shared skullduggery -- why, we went into the station grounds via the "staff entrance," which was a rickety wooden fence about 50 yards away. We certainly weren't forbidden from being there, since it is a working rail line and all, but the experience felt naughty, somehow, and glad I was to have a companion along for it.

We reconnoitered with our comrades, squeezed into someone's kitchen for breakfast, and went out for the first official tour of the event: Slightly Green and Candy Rapper stopped at the tiny primary school, half of whose students were away on a field trip. There were probably more dancers (since an adult team, Sallyport, was with us) than there were schoolkids, but everyone enjoyed themselves.

Next, a visit to the Sleights Elementary School, this time just Slightly Green and Sallyport. I jokingly asked one youngster in the audience if she and her mates wouldn't rather be inside studying their maths or writing, and with complete sincerity she replied, "Oh, no, I like this much better!" OD elicited a shy wave and a "'Byeee" from one little'un, and before she knew it there was a chorus of farewells.

Into Whitby, and an afternoon of touring hither and yon, mainly with other kids' longsword or rapper teams. Many of them seemed to be somewhat apologetic or less-than-enthusiastic about the whole thing, but one ensemble from Pocklington displayed a lot of charisma. They did a spirited version of the medieval combat dance "The Buffins," with hearty yells and, for safety sake, substituting wooden sticks for swords and small plastic garbage can lids for shields.

We checked into our accommodations at the Eskdale School, just outside of Whitby (on the way there, I looked out the window and who should I see standing in the main square but Martin Carthy, talking on his mobile), and set up camp in the three classrooms provided for us. I'd stowed my belongings around my cot, when I heard Tom P. in the hallway landing belting out a Bulgarian tune, so I took the mandolin out to see what if any kind of accompaniment I could lend. Within a few minutes, we were joined by Tom's daughter and a couple of other GMMSers, who danced to the tune as if they were at a Pinewoods or Folk Arts Center event instead of in a school corridor.

For dinner, I led OD and a small contingent of kids through town looking for some place that still served food and didn't charge an arm and a leg for the privilege. Finally found a reasonably-priced establishment, and had a warm, funny and cozy dinner, not feeling at all like I was the fifth wheel (read "adult").

Back at the school, some of the GMMS musicians and I found a room in which to jam, much to my palpable excitement ("Oh, Sean," sighed one of our fiddle players, "I love you!") We were at one point interrupted by a couple of members of the festive, ebullient Czech team (which evidently brought its own brewery along for the festival), who spoke to us with great enthusiasm and tried to suggest a tune we could play, but gee, there's that annoying language barrier again. Having seen them earlier that evening, when their brass band had taken the stage in the school gym during the social, I thought of a solution: "Do any of you know 'The Beer Barrel Polka'?" I asked the GMMS musos. "Their band was playing it half an hour or so ago."

We were joined by Tom P. and a splendid fiddler, Roger ("Rog" as he was and is known), the musician for Black Swan Rapper. We looked up, it was 1 a.m., and we knew we had to stop, painful as it was.