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