Blogs from Skipton, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

There was a knocking on the door. It was an impatient knock, and it was no surprise to discover that on the end of it was the hotel owner, rushing around letting everybody know that the kitchen would be closing soon. Fortunately we were ready, for it was 9.00, the exact time we had agreed to have our breakfast during the owner’s very brief introduction the night before. Her husband was much more relaxed, and cooked a good breakfast, which we enjoyed while we listened to husband and wife arguing somewhere in the kitchen, one being too slow, the other too fast, quite possibly. As the weather had turned out so well, it almost felt a waste to be away from home and not go for a big random walk somewhere, so we arranged for Mark ... read more

Today was our first really constructive ‘do things’ day in Skipton as we be took a trip to Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. But first there was breakfast..... A BIG YORKSHIRE COOKED BREAKFAST – EE BY GUM Because we had been living on full English breakfasts (with not too flattering results) I decided to just have muesli and fruit juice yesterday for breakfast...big mistake! Lindsay who does the cooking came out, looked at my empty muesli bowl with distain and said EE-UP what you want for breakfast then. Clearly the correct answer wasn’t ‘just finished my muesli and will have a couple bits of fruit to finish’ Being the first day I thought better have something, it went a bit like this: Um sausage, bacon and an egg Just one egg then Yup ... read more

LONDON to SKIPTON Was great to spend night at the Darlington Hyde Park, we even had our old room again! After a delicious freshly cooked full English breakfast we headed for Paddington to catch the Heathrow Express to pick our rental car. Everything went smoothly, tickets from machine, on train 15 minutes later stepping off at Heathrow. The public transport around London is fantastic. We upgraded our car slightly to a later model with a built in GPS, it is also diesel. While fuel prices are roughly the same here (in fact diesel is just a wee bit more expensive) you do a lot more miles to the gallon on diesel so overall we hope the costs will balance out. While we were confirming bookings etc the heavens opened and it absolutely bucketed down! We got ... read more

Where to begin! Hopefully this will be the start of an interesting read, but I'm not promising anything! I finished my last flight at Virgin on 24th September 2009. It was a brilliant trip with Ed to Los Angeles. I spent my last days off in Brighton and in between drinking and eating out, managed to pack up two suitcases with belongings I don't want to throw away. Met mum and dad hungover on the train from London to Leeds (me, not them!) They'd just got back from their east coast USA and Canada holiday so thought it would be a nicer journey (their M&S bag of sandwiches, crisps and chocolate helped!) Have just spent the last few days with family and school friends before the start of the big trip away! Will try adding a ... read more

The weather is giving that impression of improving more each day.Its not that it has been wet,apart from our day in York,but just that it feels it is starting to warm up a little. Skipton,which is the largest town,in the immediate area and about 12 miles from Settle reportedly has the biggest and most diverse market in the North Yorkshire Dales so we thought we had better look it over. As expected the town was busy with both cars finding parking space and people wandering the area close to the main street where the market was set up. All you had to do was follow the Saturday morning crowd and you would find the main street and marketplace. The stalls were set up both sides of the main street and offered a wide range of goods ... read more