Day 10 Believe it or not it's Ripley Castle


Believe it or not, Ripley Castle

The Village of Ripley is only about 10 minutes drive from Knaresborough.  We visited here in January, but obviously it was completely different in the winter, and was also closed for the season.  Today we were able to do a tour of the Castle.  The guy taking the tour was a real character, and started off by telling us it wasn’t really a castle at all, rather a 42 room Manor House.  Then he pointed out the “marble” pillars were actually made of wood not marble, so he said we were probably being ripped off. 

The history dates back to the early 1300’s.  The story is that King Edward III was in the area on a boar hunt.  He apparently speared a wild boar, but did not kill it.  The boar turned on him, and it was the quick actions of Thomas Ingilby that saved him, and he speared the boar as it was attacking and saved the kings life.  The king was quite pleased about this and promptly knighted him and gave him a chunk of land, which is where the village of Ripley is today.  There are still Ingilby’s living in the top floor of the castle, with the bottom floor open for tours.  There is an adjacent church that is also used for weddings, and it would make a spectacular wedding venue.



The tour was about an hour and a half long, full of interesting snippets of information that I don’t recall enough of to repeat here.  Suffice to say, it was a great tour and well worth the time.  Afterwards, we went to the tea rooms and had a fruit scone with jam and cream and a cuppa to wash it all down with. 
Fiona and J after polishing off scones and cream

J was delighted when two Eurofighters roared past, apparently they often come up o the Yorkshire dales to practice, as it is less inhabited than other areas of England.

We wandered the village, visited a gin distillery where J sampled some Harrogate Tipple Gooseberry flavoured gin and bought a small bottle to add to Heather’s growing collection.

Sadly it was time to end our adventure in Yorkshire, so we bade farewell to Fiona and Jonathan (Fiona’s 18 year old son, not J), loaded all our junk into the car and headed back to Manchester to spend a last night with Heather & Tom before our flight to Oslo tomorrow. 

Then it was time for a frantic pack and reshuffle, it is incredible how many books and kits J has managed to accumulate in just a week.  Biiiiig HEAVY books.

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