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Published: July 21st 2012
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Enjoying the UK summer
Moya and me braving the elements in Staithes near Whitby, where James Cook started his working life before he set off to find a land with better weather. Yes it really was that cold! DISCLAIMER –
Don’t expect the photos to match up with the words – the website can't do exact placement and I either write too much or have too many pics, or both, so I’m starting the photos from the most recent and they may match up somewhere in the middle!! NB – if I wrote more regularly to keep up with the number of pics I take, you’d all be bored witless ;p
Let’s go to Lincoln he said. Why?
We’d agreed this trip was to be about places we hadn’t been before, but in my mind Lincolnshire was flat farmland with nothing much to commend it. However we had a week before our next booked cottage and Lincolnshire was sort-of on the way.
My opinion now? Lincoln is a beautiful little city (about 100k pop.) on an escarpment above an emerald green quilt of countryside and ideal for the walking tourist.
The tourist trifecta of Roman remains, castle and cathedral are a convenient little cluster on top of the hill and the walk up from the busy main shopping area and river esplanade below is rewardingly steep and picturesque.
So picturesque in
Staithes harbour
a North Yorkshire fishing village fact that The Strait and Steep Hill have been crowned Britain's Great Street winner for 2012!!
Another surprise has been how beautiful the Peak District is.
Mainly in Derbyshire and long a destination for Brits, it’s not usually on the list for Kiwi travellers unless they are committed walkers.
A mecca for ‘ramblers’, there are also easily accessible short walks along stunning river valleys such as the Derwent, which was a cradle for the industrial revolution through mining, quarrying and milling.
It must have been pretty disgusting in the 18
th and 19
th centuries with hundreds of factories lining the river valleys, belching out poisonous fumes and a cacophony of clanging, but the countryside has healed itself amazingly and the few remaining industrial sites are picturesque like the Masson Mills, now a retail complex, in Matlock Bath.
The demands of industry soon outgrew these steep sided valleys and moved west to Manchester or east to Sheffield, leaving gorgeous villages of limestone cottages trickling down steep streets and looking like they have grown organically from the limestone escarpments – which in effect they have, as the rock has been quarried here since Roman times.
Whitby harbour
where Cook was an apprentice seaman – a scaled down replica of the Endeavour takes tourists for joy rides and even at two and half times that size it’s still a very tiny boat to set sail for the other side of the world! We had a clear enough day to do the pilgrimage up Kinder Scout, the high point of the Pennines in the Peak District which is famous as the meeting point for a ‘mass trespass’ of ramblers in 1932, protesting their ‘right to roam’ over areas that landowners had reserved for their use only – usually for shooting grouse.
The resulting controversy eventually led to this and similar wildly beautiful areas being designated national parks, which are often still in private ownership and farmed, but organisations like the National Trust administer the area and national walkways such as the Pennine Way.
If you see a signpost which says public footpath or bridleway, as long as you don’t stray off that pathway, you can go through farmland, farm buildings, even private gardens – if there’s been a walk way there, it will stay a public walkway.
These regulations to prevent further destruction of England’s green and pleasant land unfortunately did not come soon enough to stop a huge and ugly fertiliser plant scarring the landscape right next to our beautiful cottage on the North York Moors.
As we neared this new destination, Christine the GPS encouraged us to
Whitby Captain Cook memorial
we paid homage to the town's most famous son turn off the secondary road and down what looked like a farm track with grass growing in the middle, closer and closer to the smoke belching abomination we had seen in the distance.
A slight digression here to explain Christine. Tom and Mary, our wonderful rellies-in-law in Suffolk, have lent us their sat nav which they call Christine so we thought it best to carry on calling her that as the last thing you want to do is upset your navigation system.
I’ve always staunchly eschewed using anything other than good old tatty, ripped, unable-to-be-refolded maps, but as I now have to remove my glasses to be able to read the small print on maps, then speedily replace them to be able to read the road signs, the offer of Christine was gratefully accepted.
This, I thought, would reduce marital stress and the long strained silences endured after I’ve directed us onto a motorway instead of into a supermarket carpark.
The reality is that not only does Rhys still argue with me about directions – he argues with Christine as well!...”That
can’t be the right road…well that sign I saw said
this way…
I think it’s the
Whitby harbour
with the famous Abbey on the hill next turn off”
Christine does sometimes get confused by narrow country lanes and new road layouts, but I swear if she were called Bruce, Rhys would do exactly what he said.
Having two women in the car telling him where to go is just too much. The other day in frustration he called her “a slut”. I’m surprised she’s still working.
Fearing our cottage was in the grounds of a huge potash mine, we were relieved to find Christine was right and our cottage was up a narrow muddy lane looking out over beautiful north Yorkshire moors and farmland.
Unfortunately, half the time we couldn’t see the view through rain and sea mist rolling in from Scandinavia.
Moya had joined us to recover from an exhausting 28 day Europe Grand Tour and we’d had to settle for two phone calls and one facebook message for the duration of the tour.
So the rain was perfect for catching up on (nearly) all the excitement of the trip, but it starting to get a little annoying when we knew there were wonderful coast and moorland walks out there.
In between the Peak District and Yorkshire
The lure of the penny arcade
Moya found the slightly less historic charms of Whitby irresistible we spent a week in the Lake District and were looking forward to walks with stunning views, but each morning was more like waking up In a lake than beside a lake.
Clearly we missed the week of UK summer in March while we were in Spain. The panorama at the top of the blog is Lake Windermere on the only fine day of our week when we took a boat trip.
It’s official that April May and June have been the dullest and wettest April May and June since records began.
I’d expected to have to walk in rain at some stage, especially in the National Park areas. But that annoying jet stream which has taken a journey south for the summer and is hovering over England instead of blowing over the top of Scotland, has started to dampen more than our boots.
Heading north for July and August seemed such a good plan – away from Olympic-mania and expensive accommodation – but it is still
freezing here in Northumberland.
No wonder they got taken over by Vikings – only people from Scandinavia would think this was a good climate to live in.
Whitby Abbey
impressive ruins on a site that has been an abbey since the 7th century and was an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula We're off to Scotland tomorrow and hope the promised warmer weather will arrive...it will just be embarrassing to get hypothermia in the middle of summer...
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