A Good Day, continued

Strangely enough, I have mentioned Fountains Abbey only three times on my blog so far (this is the fourth time); once in the post preceding this one, once in a post about the book "The Lady's Maid", and in this post.

My first visit to Fountains Abbey was, I believe, in 2004 (my mother-in-law moved from South Yorkshire to Ripon in 2003), and I have gone back almost every year since. It is a place that I love, with its combination of wide open spaces, carefully landscaped (and yet quite natural looking) parkland, impressive ruins and (mostly) away from the noise of traffic and the hustle and bustle of city life. No matter the weather or season, it is always worth visiting, and one can spend anything from a few hours to a full day there without getting bored.

Clicking on this link will take you to my photobucket album; from there, simply click "next" and you'll see the pictures I took at Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal in August 2010.

My sister and I walked down the main road (I don't think there are any other roads there, actually) of Studley Roger, and arrived at the gates to enter the vast area that comprises Studley Royal and Fountains Abbey.

It is a long, straight stretch of road, leading past large old trees, some of which we were sure pull out their roots at night and wander around the park, making sure everything is as it should be, and the deer are not eating the bark off the young saplings planted to replace their dead comrades.

Looking back towards where we came from, in the distance, right on the axis of this road, you can just about make out Ripon Cathedral.

The first building you pass when coming to Fountains Abbey this way is this one, the Chorister's House. It is nowhere near as old as it looks (built in 1873), but it is very picturesque, isn't it? As a private residence (a holiday home that sleeps up to 10 people, according to the Fountains Abbey website), it is not open to the public, and I took this picture from quite far away, not wanting to intrude on their privacy.

Next is St. Mary's, a church built in 1870 to commemorate the Marchioness of Ripon's brother who had been murdered in Greece (I remember this information from a leaflet we were given in the church, but I just looked it up again on the website to make sure I am getting dates and names right).

I took this picture specifically with my blog and its readers in mind!


We walked on towards Fountains Abbey; up until here, by the way, you do not pay any admission fee - so, less well-off families can well afford taking their children to those beautiful grounds and do not necessarily need to hang out at shopping malls and bus stops.

Stone walls have almost the same tugging appeal to me as doors and doorways, and I loved the play of light and shadow on this one.


During all the visits to Fountains Abbey, I had never been inside Fountains Hall - probably because I thought it would cost extra admission, which it doesn't. So, this time, my sister and I ventured inside - we had the place all to ourselves.

This mansion would certainly deserve its own blog post! Please read up on its interesting and changeful history on the official website.

A few shots from the inside (part of it - obviously not shown here - can be rented as a holiday home; wouldn't it be great to be staying there for a few days?):

And then finally, Fountains Abbey itself! 
But I'm afraid this post has, again, turned out longer than I expected, and therefore, I'll take you on our walk further on tomorrow.

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?

And Now: England!

It is almost two weeks now since my sister and I have returned from our holiday in Yorkshire, and by now I have done all the catching-up (blogwise) I meant to do, and am ready to start on the Yorkshire report.

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.

But now, off we go!

As I told you in this post, the day before we left, it was really warm here in South Germany at about 28 Celsius (82 F). But of course we knew not to expect the same weather up in Yorkshire; we had checked the forecast and packed our bags accordingly.

To be ready for all sorts of temperatures, layers are your best choice, and so I went layered, as you can see; my red suitcase is already waiting by the door. (My grey padded winter coat was coming with me as well, but I did not need to wear it until we landed in Manchester)


Travelling to England from Germany is really just a short hop across the Channel, about 1 1/2 hours by plane from Stuttgart to Manchester, and even shorter to London. To get to the airport in Stuttgart, it takes about an hour for us: a ten-minute walk to the station and 3/4 of an hour on two different inner city trains. Going through security and then waiting by the gate takes up some time, too, but I do understand all these measures are necessary, and don't complain.
Our flight was punctual almost to the minute, and when we landed in Manchester and arrived at the luggage pick-up, my red suitcase was emerging on the conveyor just that very moment. My sister's suitcase was there, too, and so we arrived at the airport's train station just in time to get on the train we had been hoping to catch. I had booked our train tickets over the internet already a few days ago, so we did not lose time buying those, either.


It was a Sunday, and while the Transpennine "Express" took its usual leisurely pace for the stretch between Manchester and Leeds, connections from Leeds were a bit trickier: Some engineering on the line between Leeds and Harrogate meant there was no train, but a replacement service in the shape of a bus.
There were no signs to indicate where that bus would be going from, so I asked at the station, and we found the provisorial stop just as the bus was approaching.


By then, it had begun to rain, and it was cold enough for my winter coat.
It was warm and dry on the bus, though, and for the next hour and a half, we were taken across the Yorkshire country side in what sometimes resembled white-water rafting, splashing along the narrow lanes through huge puddles.

In Harrogate, my sister-in-law met us and drove the 20 minutes or so to Ripon, to the B&B where we were going to stay the next seven nights.

So, apart from horse-drawn carriage and boat, we used almost any means of transport, and it took us about eight hours altogether, but it was all worth it!
We took a well-deserved rest in our cosy room that evening, as you can see: (note the triangular sandwich next to the lamp...)

Here are some pictures of the B&B. It is called Box Tree Cottages, situated only a five minute walk from Ripon's market square, and yet the neighbourhood is very quiet. There are only six rooms, and it is managed by two couples who are very friendly and make an extremely good breakfast. Their website is here.

Our room was on the upper floor; the 2nd window from left was our bathroom, the 3rd window our bedroom. The breakfast room is to the left of the front door, the lounge to the right.

View from the back; there is plenty of space for visitors' cars. 

This church is right opposite Box Tree Cottages, but sadly, it has no bells (or at least they are never rung).

Our room: (sorry about the first picture being rather dark)
Isn't it lovely? I wouldn't want it at home (too much deco), but I loved it there; it was the same room we already had in August 2010. We certainly needed all those extra blankets, with temperatures getting as low as -4 Celsius at night!

The lounge:

And the breakfast room - plus an example of what we had every morning (for me, preceded by a bowl of muesli, for my sister, followed by some toast and jam or marmalade).

Now you have the setting ready, and my next post will be about the next day.

Fashion Calendar: May

This should be the last post before I'll start on writing about my week in Yorkshire, so bear with me - or simply skip this one and wait for the next.

Some of you will remember that one of the many things I like doing in my spare time (but only when the weather is favourable, and never during the colder half of the year) is running, and I am sure I have mentioned before that for the past three years, I have been participating in my hometown's CityRun (a mere 10 km, which is enough for me but something a lot of people run almost every day, and ridiculous to those hardy sportsmen and -women who regularly run marathons - something I do not aim at, since I only run for FUN).

Today, I will show you what I usually wear for running.

The shoes are the new ones I had for my birthday in March. 
The yellow zip-up is a firm favourite of mine, several years old, and came at 15 € from a summer sale at an Esprit shop in Stuttgart, I recall. 

At the company I worked for until about a year ago, there used to be a time when our bosses would quite often hold a competition for the sales team, with prizes to be won by the team member who'd sell the most of a certain product in a certain space of time. Now, I do like my job, and even if I say so myself, am not bad at it, but I am not ambitious when it comes to numbers - what I like about it is constantly being in touch with people, with the numbers just being a welcome side-effect. So it was quite a coincidence that, three times in a row, it was me who won those competitions at work (good job we were a really good team and there never was any jealousy from the others' part). One of the prizes was a voucher for a sports equipment shop in the town where the company was located. And so one lunch break, I walked over to that shop and got myself the running pants, the aquamarine zip-up and a matching t-shirt (which you can not see in the picture), all three from Venice Beach - not because I am particularly keen on that label, but because they were the right colour and size.
This was in 2004 or so, and both the pants and the zip-up have been through the washing countless times - but they are of a quality good enough to still keep their shape, and I will keep wearing them for as long as I can.

For warmer days, I have a pair of shorter running pants and will run without a zip-up, but at the moment, I don't dare doing that yet.

And for the actual CityRun, I'll be wearing the t-shirt given to me by the gym I shall be running for, with their name on it - not my favourite item (it is rather big), but as they pay my starting fee, they rightly expect me to wear it). 

I had an exercise run scheduled for last night, but never went, since it was way too cold for my liking at about 8 Celsius. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, and as it is a bank holiday in Germany, I will have plenty of time to run - and am looking forward to it!

And The Winners Are...

...oh no, not so fast! Let me build up a little suspense before I'll reveal who won our giveaway and will soon be finding a pair of my Mum's hand-knitted socks in their mail.

First of all, thank you to everyone who commented and/or participated - we were both quite overwhelmed by the response! My blog has now 80 followers, something I never expected when I first started blogging a bit over 3 years ago.

Friko wrote yesterday about her reasons for blogging, and Pete expressed his thoughts on the subject some time ago.

For myself, blogging started out of necessity.

Writing in itself was something I have enjoyed since I was able to string the first words together, in huge capital letters stumbling across a piece of paper, done in crayon at the age of 5, and most likely with the tip of my tongue with all the serious effort showing in one corner of my mouth. My sister and I both loved writing up little stories, illustrating them with photos of dolls and stuffed animals we cut from the toy catalogue that made our favourite reading in the weeks leading up to Christmas each year.

At school, I must have bored my teachers to tears with essays rarely under ten pages; I guess they gave me good marks merely out of gratitude for finally having come to the end of my ramblings.

Learning to type (blind, 10 fingers) was great - it finally enabled me to write a lot quicker than before, and in a way that other people would actually be able to read it! (My handwriting is hardly legible to myself.)

And then, in the late 1990s, I discovered the internet, chat rooms and email.

I made friends over the internet, even found a husband (without having specifically set out to do so), and to this day am in touch with some of the people I first met in the virtual world.

The year 2008, especially the months from October to December, were a particularly difficult time in my life. A good friend pointed me to various means of self-expression, and blogging was one of them. So in March 2009, my blog was started, and although it has since then taken a much different direction (just as my life has changed very much since 2008/2009), I have come to really love the possibilities my blog gives me.

It lets me share anything from holiday snaps to recipes, from deep thoughts to the most mundane, and it is simply FUN to write, read your comments and of course, read your blogs as well.

Enough of that now, I think - let's get back to the giveaway!

Yesterday, I went for lunch at my parents' (which has become a weekly and much loved habit of mine), taking  all the little pieces of paper with your names on them along. My Mum provided a hat, and we were ready for the drawing:

My Mum drew the first two, and I the third lot:

Then I opened them...

And the winners are: Kay, Claudia and Friko!!!

Congratulations, ladies :-)
To claim your prize, please send me an email (the address is shown on my blog profile) with your complete mail address. I will then send a pair of socks from my Mum's stock to you as soon as possible. 


Thank you, Mum, for providing me with not just one, but THREE prizes for the giveaway, and for being so much fun to be with in all this, and guest-posting on my blog!