Ripon 2025 - Day 5

For Saturday (2 August), a day out with our former landlady was planned. Sue had suggested Helmsley Walled Garden, so that was where we were headed just after 10:00 am. Less than an hour later, we pulled into the parking lot and walked the short distance to the garden. 

We‘d been to Helmsley before, but never to this fantastic place - all run and done by volunteers! Please click here for their website, which also tells the history of the current garden - all really down to one lady who decided to push open an overgrown gate and discovered what was behind the wall.

We had tea/coffee/lemonade at The Vinehouse café before buying our tickets and exploring the garden with its many different sections, all of them beautiful, well kept but ‚wild‘ enough to encourage birds, bees, butterflies and other pollinators. The silhouette of Helmsley Castle provides a dramatic backdrop.

Inside The Vinehouse:

You start by the Orchid house, another of the original greenhouses, lovingly restored and nowadays used for meetings of the volunteers, workshops and talks.

The garden has a long central path cutting it in two halves.

From there, each smaller section of the garden can be reached. We made sure to cover them all, of course! There is also a fenced off part with chickens and ducks, as well as a (very overgrown) pond. A memorial garden is dedicated to the lady who started it all.

This was the White Garden:

Wildflowers:

Hollyhocks:

Glorious lilies:

More flowers, fruit and veg:

The Secret Garden - based on the book by Frances Hodgson Burnett. A play after the book is performed here, but it wasn‘t on the day we visited.

Lunch was next; they offered a good choice of bowls and other things. I went for today‘s frittata with grilled vegetables and pesto, all on a bed of a variety of salads. Very filling, and really good!

We then left the garden and strolled into Helmsley, looking at the shops and going into one or two. 

Before setting off, my sister treated the three of us to icecream, which was very nice and added to the summer holiday feeling. Back in Ripon, Sue invited us in for a glass of fizz, and we set a date for a meal at a restaurant before our return to Germany.

My sister and I then did the washing and went for a brief evening walk before retreating to the cottage for a snack of bread, cheese and salad.

One of many beautiful houses in Ripon