A Good Day

As mentioned in my previous post, I will try and stick to the chronological order, and will also try not to bore you to tears with overly detailed descriptions.* There will be lots of pictures, although not all of them - I took somewhere around 250 and filled almost ten pages of my album on photobucket. If you really do want to see them all, you are welcome to browse the album here, and leave comments as well.

My sister and I both slept well, us being rather tired after having spent the whole day travelling. Often, I find I do not sleep very well the first night in a strange bed, especially not when that bed is so different from my own (this one was a narrow single bed and quite on the soft side, while my own bed at home is wide enough for two, and my mattress has no bounce to speak of), but not so this time. The quiet surroundings certainly helped, too.

We had both been looking forward to our first full English breakfast, and were not disappointed!

The day looked bright and patches of blue were showing in the sky, so we decided we'd say hello to Mary and then set out to walk to Fountains Abbey.
Mary is my mother-in-law, although strictly speaking, with the death of my husband 2 1/2 years ago, we are not "related" any longer; this has not stopped us from feeling like family, though, and I am grateful for having such kind relatives in both countries. She is mentioned often in my blog, since she regularly provides me with reading material and chocolate; one of my more recent posts about her was this one.

From the B&B to Mary's house is only a short walk of maybe 15 minutes, across Ripon's market square and past the cathedral. Seeing it was looking nice and bright out there, I took my camera and can show you now a bit of Ripon:

Having walked past the Cathedral and looking back, you can see that it was indeed a fine day.

The church yard always makes me think of how well the German term fits: Friedhof, meaning court (or yard) of peace.

We saw this bird hopping about in the grass; does anyone know what it is?

This house was for sale. We were wondering whether the slightly grumpy looking cat was going to be part of the deal.

Mary's house looked as picturesque as ever. She is now 78, and still doing almost everything herself, apart from getting a handyman to cut the hedge and clean the windows. Last year, she painted all those bits blue; they used to be dark green. It goes so well with the forgetmenots! 


We did not stay long, as we wanted to make full use of the good weather, and walked back through the town and out at the other end.

The Tourist Information is practically "in" the wall, with its entrance to the left. It is staffed by very friendly people, who have proved to be helpful and kind with us  two years ago, and again this year, with such things as bus time tables and maps etc.

This is the Warehouse Café. I am sure I have talked about it before; it is a place where you can not only get a cup of tea or coffee, but very nice food such as quiches and jacket potatos, and of course cakes. The café is special in that you can buy almost anything you see - even the furniture and the crockery. The combination of antiques shop and café makes it quite interesting, and the only thing I have to complain about is their opening times... They are only open around lunch time, and we simply never were in Ripon at that hour, always being out somewhere else, so we never had a meal there this time (we did in the past). So I snuck in a few days later, when it was already open but we were on our way to catching a bus, and took the pictures of the inside.

There are three rivers running through Ripon, the Skell, the Ure and the Laver. I am quite sure that the one we crossed on leaving Ripon towards Fountains Abbey is the Laver.

We had a pleasant walk ahead; according to Google maps, it is about 4 miles and took us just a bit over an hour across fields full of pheasants and hares until we arrived at the tiny village of Studley Roger.


This post has already grown longer than I had anticipated; therefore, I will end here for today and show you the rest of our walk tomorrow.

*Not being very successful at that, am I?