August Bank holiday in Yorkshire: Sunday and Monday

Sunday morning I awoke to the hounds alarm again. Yet another bacon butty breakfast.

We popped into Helmsley, planning to get the paper and then head out for a drive. When we saw how packed the town square was by 10 on a Sunday, we decided to hang on to our parking slot and explore. We wandered into the castle as there was a display of medieaval life.
There are more pictures on my Flickr page

Sunday afternoon drove to Reivaulx Abbey - didn't go in. Instead we went up to Rievaulx woods where we had a picnic lunch in the pine trees before taking a walk in the woods.

Then more driving in Dales. We walked out on to the moor to photograph this way stone in the middle of the heather.

We finished the drive in Kirkbymoorside where we had late lunch/early tea at the Kings Head coaching inn. We headed back to the tent to freshen up and as it was dry and sunny evening we went for a drive up the dale across the road. Found this tree on a hill and had to take the picture.

A few minutes later we met a pheasant cock who didn't want to get out of the road. He ran towards the car and wouldn't move as I slowly inched forward. Sonia got out to chase him off, but he decided that he wasn't the one who was going to move back. So he moved forward and Sonia legged it round the car with the pheasant in hot pursuit. She made it round to the front before he did and hopped back into the car. I drove off because he was now behind us, but checking my rear view mirror I could see that he was chasing us off his turf. We couldn't stop laughing as we left him behind to reclaim his territory. There's no photos of the pheasant as I was too busy driving. We got back to thetent and spent the evening in the tent listening to the rain, reading, doing the Observer crossword and drinking the beer & mead we had bought in Helmsley.

Monday, woke to dry conditions so we packed tent quickly and headed for home. As we tried to avoid the holdups on the A1M, we popped into Ferrybridge Services for lunch. First place we tried was the Little Chef. Not a good idea "I've got three tables to do before I even see you" was the greeting from the manager. We sat down and I let Sonia know what I wanted to eat then headed off to the loos. Came back to hear that the manager would only take our drink order, she refused to let Sonia place our food order at same time. We walked out and went to self service section. After an "interesting" detour through Doncaster to avoid standing traffic on A1, we got home late in the afternoon.

August Bank Holiday in Yorkshire: Saturday

Saturday morning's alarm call came courtesy of the local hunt's hounds welcoming their feed at about 6 a.m. It's amazing how far their howls carry across the fields. After a breakfast of bacon butties and mugs of tea we set off for Pickering to go on the North Yorks Moors Railway. This is a steam train service that runs along a valley in the moors from Pickering to Grosmont (and back again).

We took a ride but stayed on board when the train pulled into Goathland which is famous as 'Aidensfield' in the Heartbeat TV series and as Hogsmeade in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. Saw this advert for the old Craven A cigarettes. I think they only told half the story - it didn't mention what they did to your lungs...

Getting off at the end of the line in Grosmont, we watched our train steam off back to Pickering.

We wandered around the engineering sheds. You get to them through a tunnel that was first used by horse drawn trains.

While we waited for the train back, we had lunch in the village pub. Sonia's soup came IN a bread roll.

The journey back was on a different steam train, apparently the "Sir Nigel Gresley" is famous in trainspotting circles as the first train to do more that 110 mph. It definitely wasn't doing that on the way back but it was all very enjoyable.


Late Saturday afternoon was spent shopping in Pickering and Kirkbymoorside to get picnic items for Sunday. We headed back to camp and decided that we would have fish and chips from local chip shop in Nawton. In the evening we decided that we would try the pub in the next village. This involved the OS map and a walk on footpaths over the fields to Wombleton and back. Despite my best endeavours we managed to take the wrong turning on the way there, it was a nice walk down and then back up a field. When we got to the pub at 6.30 we found that it didn't open until 7 so we sat on the table in front and waited. While we sat there the first rain drops started to fall just as the pub was about to open so we headed inside to wait for the rain to stop. A couple of pints later and we headed back via a different route. Again, we missed a turning and didn't take the shortest footpath back. But we did get back before nightfall after following a footpath that led us to a layby to the east of Nawton.