Exploring North Yorkshire

 

Garden at Ardann Cottage

 

Wake to a blue cloudless sky and the garden looking gorgeous. Laura plans a drive around North Yorkshire for us, climbing up Sutton Bank where there is a white horse on the hill. She drives and navigates through a collection of narrow, winding and steep roads with some great views. We pass through charming towns like Thirsk, Kilburn, and Ripon. Domestic architecture here is much more attractive, mostly because the houses are older, made of pale grey stone, and are simpler. Although similar, they are not all depressingly identical. All the pubs and many of the shops are decorated with hanging baskets exploding with summer colour against the grey. When not driving through villages we’re driving through wooded areas, or past fields of stubble where wheat and grass hay have recently been cut. It’s beautiful and very restful being driven about and not having to make any decisions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pub where we lunch

We make a number of stops:  in Thirsk to buy wood glue because Peter is planning to do some repairs to Laura’s dining chairs, in Kilburn for a pub lunch and to visit the gallery of the Mouseman, a furniture maker who sculpts a tiny mouse into every piece he creates, whether it be a cheese board or a bookcase. We stop to look at the White Horse from a carpark just below it, but decide it’s too steep to climb up for a closer look; and at Byland Abbey for a look and a walk through a huge ruined church that once was home to a Cistercian community of 100 monks and 200 lay brothers. In Helmsley we buy ice creams, eating them while we watch the packing up of the last stalls of a market that’s been held in the market square (charming, complete with ancient market cross). While we are there Laura remembers that she was going to contact her local clinic to see if they would take the remaining stitches out of my leg. After a long wait for an answer, they advise her that we should go to Minor Injuries in Ripon Hospital, so we make a final stop in Ripon, where a very efficient nurse registers me in the NHS (I am "out of area") and whips out the stitches in a couple of minutes.

Mediaeval tiled floor

Byland Abbey