Day 10 - 5th January

Fiona had kindly offered to be our guide and take us to a few local sights so we agreed to meet up about 1pm outside our hotel. Before that though, the unenviable task of catching up on washing was needed to be addressed so we found a launderette at the top of 'Cold Bath road’ ( one end of which was where our hotel had been) and dropped off our clothes to be done. We also changed booking to stay at a Travel lodge in Harrogate as there was nothing in Knaresborough and made our stay two nights.

Laundry duly done, and we checked in to our new digs (with a much bigger room) and then went to meet Fiona after a brief scout of our surroundings.

Fiona drives a new model Fiat Bambina so we finally got to experience a drive in the car, and it’s quite a delightful vehicle, neatly styled inside as well.

First Fiona took us to the village of Ripley and Ripley castle. Most of the land and buildings in the village are owned by the family that owns the castle, so they do not often come up for sale. The Castle was closed for tours (a winter thing) so we wandered the grounds instead. The Castle has a walled garden complete with a palm house and even its own hand-pulled fire engine (used only once in its life and that was to put out a blaze in a neighboring township!)

Ripley Castle

Grounds

Lake & weir

One side of the walled garden showing the palm house

The gardens and grounds are beautifully manicured but being winter most of the trees were bare and no flowers were around. However it was a very nice walk and the afternoon light made for some good photo’s. Being winter here, the sun does not get very high in the sky and so even at midday it feels like late afternoon sunset, with full darkness falling around 4pm (along with the temperatures!).

After Ripley, we went to Wetherby for a look around. This is an old market town and still has markets in the square during summer but not so much in winter. Fiona has recommended a place for an afternoon tea called “Filmore & Union” , a Yorkshire based company that does organic and whole foods so we turned up hoping for a table inside. This was not to be so we parked ourselves outside , rugged up with the supplied blankets and enjoyed very nice food and probably the best flat whites we’ve had here in the UK so far! On the subject of flat whites, they are far more prominent now than they were 15 years ago so almost every place now will be able to make one – some are barely cappuccino’s but F & U made perfect flat whites!

Wetherby is typical of English villages as I mentioned before, narrow windy streets (cobbled in many cases) with lots of old, mostly historic, stone buildings. Stone & brick are the two dominant building materials here, almost no weatherboard housing at all.

Evening shot of the river

Old water wheel

A rather tidy 'shambles'

Before dropping us back, Fiona invited us to her place the next night for dinner so that was a wrap for today and we have home cooking to look forward to tomorrow.