Goldsborough weekend

We have a fairly quiet weekend with David and Laura, living their village life. Laura knows that Peter loves to fix things, and has a short list. Peter and I work together to reglue dining chairs that are becoming wobbly. There are two remotes that are no longer doing what they are supposed to do, one for the heating and one which automatically opens and closes curtains. After a long struggle I finally get the curtains under control, but as at the time of writing, we do not yet have automatic temperature control.

Saturday morning is spent completing the Listener crossword, which Laura and I have been doing together for more than a decade. We work separately, normally comparing results by email when we're done. It was fun to be doing that in the same room. The end game was particularly obscure, and it was Peter who finally found the key that allowed me to solve the puzzle.

Saturday lunch is fish and chips brought in from a shop in Knaresborough. In the evening we prepare a picnic and head into Knaresborough for an outdoor performance of Little Women, a play adapted from the book. It was a very good performance, compensating for the fact that being an outdoor audience in an English summer requires scarves, puffer jackets and beanies. I wisely decided to wear my thermal singlet, by the end of the show I wished I'd worn thermal pants as well. We were sustained with pork pie and a glass or two of wine.

On Sunday we make a leisurely start to the day and head to the Goldsborough village pub for lunch with Laura's friends Roy and Sue. We all return to the cottage for homemade rhubarb and apple crumble for pud, then sit around talking and drinking for the rest of the afternoon - it's quite a shock when the curtains close automatically, signalling that it is already 8pm. But we just open them again and carry on until around 9pm when Roy and Sue go home (which requires them to cross the road to their house opposite), then we clear the table and go to bed.

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

 

 

Blighty!

In Manchester. Predictably, it is raining as we touch down, and skies remain grey. Manchester Airport is singularly dreary, especially after the opulence of Doha. Next step is the Trans-Pennine to York. About to head to the platform as it can't be any drearier than where we are sitting now.

We make a tactical error - on the platform we find a station buffet where we could have got a much-needed coffee, but as the train is there we find our way to the carriage where we have reserved seats and wait for the train to be opened. And wait. Train starts, adding diesel fumes to the drizzle that is blowing in under the canopy. Still no opening of doors - we wait well past departure time. Once on the train there is an apology for the delay, "Bit of a mix-up, we had the wrong diagram and we had to get the right one." What sort of diagram and why it might be needed is not explained. 

But the journey across the Pennines is lovely, and we do finally get given a cup of warm liquid passing for coffee, and a biscuit. The privileges of travelling First Class. We manage to find Laura and David when we alight in York, and they drive us back to their home, Ardann Cottage in the tiny village of Goldsborough.

In flight

If I've successfully mastered on-board wifi I'll be able to post this.

Clearly not.

Now on the next plane, trying again.