Ripon 2025 - Days 9 & 10

I have no photos for you for Wednesday (6 August) and only a few for Thursday (7 August).

On Wednesday, our friends N & F (N is an old school friend of my late husband, and F is his wife) who had to cancel their originally visit with us last Thursday, arrived just before 10:00 in the morning. We had tea and biscuits in our cottage and caught up with each other for about an hour before walking into town.

At the Cathedral, we wanted to show them the exhibition "Threads through the Cross" which I have mentioned here, but sadly found it had ended the day before - we'd been sure that it was going to go on for quite a while, and that N & F would have really liked it. We wandered round the Cathredral nonetheless and then spent some time at its shop before leisurely making our way to Oliver's Pantry for a spot of lunch.

They left at 2:00 pm, and we each retreated to our rooms for a rest.

Friends S & N who live in Ripon, their garden backing the Ripon Canal, were expecting us at 3:30 pm. We had tea (the others) and homemade elderflower water (me) and biscuits in their garden, with their friend R (whom we had not met before) joining us. It was a nice afternoon, and later S went inside and prepared a lovely salad of watercress and other ingredients, topped with flowers from her garden, a bowl of tomato-mozzarella salad, fresh crisp baguette and olives. For dessert, her husband brought out creamy icecream with fresh raspberries - all very summerly and nice. 

We agreed to go for a walk together afterwards, and along the way N - who is extremely knowledgeable about Ripon's industrial history - pointed out many interesting details to us, mainly to do with the mills and how the water from the river Skell was put to use in the past.

At the One-Eyed Rat, we had beers (the others) and rhubarb G&T (S and myself), and the conversation was free-flowing and covering many different subjects, from serious to silly and back again. However, it was extremely noisy in the pub, and by 10:00 pm I had reached a point where I felt all chatted out and unable to listen any longer. 

My sister and I went home, and so did S, N and R.

Much as I love our friends and really enjoyed spending time with them, it had been a very intense day, and therefore my sister and I decided to make Thursday a quiet one to recover.

It was Market Day, and as last Thursday, we browsed both the stalls as well as some of the shops we had not yet been in. 

For lunch, we went to "Realitea", a small Indian restaurant we'd discovered for ourselves only last year. The food is excellent and the service friendly. The lady who owns it comes out to the tables and asks everyone how they've liked their meal. You can see Sarita's beautiful smile and learn a bit more about this place here.

A rest at the cottage followed, then coffee and a piece of Millionaire's Shortbread before we went for a walk by the river Ure. Part of the path we knew already, part we didn't.

On a pasture with cows, we saw one cow laying on her side well away from the other, even her head on the ground, which is not what cows usually do when they are resting/sleeping/ruminating. We were somewhat concerned but then saw a man approaching the cow (he kept outside the fence) and talking to her. To our relief, we saw the cow lifting her head, so we knew she wasn't dead. We walked a bit further on but saw that the path would take us too far out (and it was already evening by now), so we decided to go back. Maybe ten minutes had passed since we'd first been past the cow, and now as we returned, she was up on her feet, busily licking a tiny calf that had only just been born!!! She'd done it all on her own, with no vet or farmer present, and the little one was trying to get up already, as it should.

A man with two dogs came from the other side of the field. When he passed us, he said "I hear we have another calf!", and he turned out to be a farm hand who'd been checking on the cow about to give birth only an hour or so earlier. He said he was actually not working with the cows but with the machinery, but since his boss was away, he was on "calf duty" that day. 

It was really touching to witness the mother cow with her newborn baby, and I just wish all cows had the chance to be with their little ones as long as possible.

For our evening meal, I heated the two pies we'd bought on the market that morning and made a salad to go with it.