Day 9 Grassington in the Yorkshire dales

I’ll start today’s post with a map of where we’ve been these last couple of days.  

Nunnington Hall is marked courtesy of google maps, Knaresborough where we are staying is underlined in red, and today’s destinations are highlighted in yellow.

Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales was our adventure today.   The dales are further west than the Yorkshire moors, and ironically, these were more like I had pictures the moors to be, at least in parts.  But there were still rolling green hills, and mile upon mile of stone walls.  I was fascinated by them, all hand built, just stone stacked on stone, with only gravity to hold them in place.  And where did all the stones come from?  Thanks goodness for google. 

Dry stone walls are a dominant landscape feature of the Yorkshire Dales. Together they are the largest man made feature in the Yorkshire Dales. A survey in 1988 recorded over 8000 km (5000 miles) together with 1000 km (620 miles) of hedgerow and 250 km (155 miles) of fence. Some dry stone walls have been allowed to fall into disrepair as farms amalgamate, or even removed altogether to make larger fields, but most are maintained as an essential part of farming systems.

Some field walls are amongst the oldest man made features of the Dales landscape but most of those still in use were built during the last five hundred years.

Dry stone walls are called dry because no mortar or other bonding material such as clay is used to keep the stones together.

Most walls are built out of locally available stone.

So there you go, what would we do without the internet?

This photo is taken in the village, but the structure is the same as the ones in the fields.

We drove past the Medwith RAF base, which houses a whole bunch of golf ball like structures, essentially used for listening.  There would be at least a dozen of varying sizes, all looking quite spectacular against the green countryside.

We arrived in Grassington, yet another quaint little village, with narrow cobbled streets and houses built hundreds of years ago.  We wandered the villages, poking in and out of shops, and stopping for a bite of lunch.  Ok it wasn’t a bite, it was more than a few mouthfuls.  I had a “posh chip and egg butty”, followed by scone with clotted cream and jam, all washed down with a flat white.  

posh chip & egg butty

scone with clotted cream and jam

Not too shabby for Deb.  Just as well we are doing lots of walking !

Today happened to be an “open garden” day, where the locals invite the public in to admire their green thumbs.  We paid our entry fee of 2 pounds 50 each and were given an orange dot to wear and proof of payment and a map to follow the garden trail.  So we wandered again, following the map and admiring the efforts of the gardeners.  

The sun obliged and we had to stop at one of the local pubs for a nice cold drink and a wee rest before we wandered back to the car and headed off.  

We drove home through more lovely Yokshire dales, and a series of quaint little villages, Pateley Bridge, Summer Bridge and eventually home.  

J arrived back from the airshow today, and we all went and had dinner at the local Indian restaurant.  

It is the World Cup cricket final between NZ and England, so I was anxiously following the score on my phone, while Fiona was following the Men’s singles final at Wimbledon.   

Every now and then there was a cheer from the kitchen as the English team scored a four or a six.  Thankfully we’d gone for the buffet, so they couldn’t easily serve is sneezers once they found out we were kiwi’s.