Thursday 23 September 2010

UK Day 23 - Ripon, Ridley, Harrogate

I caught the bus into town, and bought a day-ticket for the Route 36 bus to Ripon and stops along the way. I got off at Harewood, but it was drizzling and the house wasn’t opening til 12pm (it was 10:30am), so I decided to get back on the bus and go to Ripon first. Luckily the very next bus went there:

IMG_0873IMG_0874

IMG_0877  

The cathedral is really beautiful and it’s 1300 years old!

IMG_0880IMG_0892

IMG_0896

After photographing the cathedral, I got back on the bus and stopped at Ripley, because that looked nice on the way up. There’s a castle there, which I didn’t want to bother visiting, but the owner of the castle had the entire village moved and remodelled to resemble a French village. I don’t know that it does, but it’s pretty. The castle is quite nice too:

IMG_0910 IMG_0921

IMG_0928IMG_0929

IMG_0933IMG_0939     

I went back to the bus stop and there were some young girls who’d walked in just before me, looking guilty as they messed about with their bag. Turned out they wanted a smoke (which is illegal in the bus shelter). I told them to go ahead and we started chatting. They told me they loved my accent and asked why I didn’t have a tan, living in Aus. They think kids in Australia are all little goody-two-shoes and wouldn’t dream of smoking :-).

Next stop on my travels was Harrogate. I’d been looking forward to coming back here since the drive out. It’s got so many beautiful buildings and parks. It was a spa town and is still set up for tourists. It seems many people go there for holidays.:

IMG_0951IMG_0967

IMG_0969IMG_0972

IMG_0979IMG_0987

IMG_0992   

I went into the spa museum. It cost 3.30 GBP, which wasn’t really worth it I think. It had a tea-pot exhibition which I didn’t think was terribly relevant. I did get to taste the water, which was prescribed for people to drink a few times a day. It tasted like over-salted egg. Yuck! :

IMG_0998IMG_0997  

I had to go wash the taste out of my mouth with a nice coffee at Betty’s after that! But first I had to find it:

IMG_1011IMG_1014

IMG_1020IMG_1022

IMG_1024IMG_1029 

Found it:

IMG_1035IMG_1041

I had some Yorkshire Rarebit (cheese on toast, basically) and a pot of coffee (1 1/2 teacups worth) for about 12 GBP. But it’s famous and the service was excellent. After that, I headed in the direction of the bus stop to catch the bus back to Leeds:

IMG_1036IMG_1054

IMG_1042

I got the bus back to Leeds and then another walk to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Barbara’s in Belle Isle for the night.