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.