Work has been pretty uneventful, and after some rapid and violent fluctuations in my finances ~(during which I blasted through my newly established "safety zone" overdraft to the tune of 200%), I'm now back in credit and happy to leave it like that. Let's leave the money idle for a couple of weeks, the payments I need to make will be made automatically, and what's left is mine, all mine and only mine.
Anyway...
My mum has this habit of springing things on me. She'll wait until either I'm sobering up after a heavy night, and just about to go to bed, or completely asleep and unable to understand what's going on, before coming out with "right we're going to xyz and everyone's coming along".
She's done it twice in the past couple of weeks, and to be honest, both times have turned out to be okay. Sure I felt a mess at the time, but lots of fun was had by all :-).
First stop, Chestnut Park, or something like that.
Synopsis? A load of hills and trees in the middle of nowhere, within which is cunningly hidden an otter and owl sanctuary. It was cool. I always figured otters were little things the size of squirrels or whatever, turns out (the larger ones) are closer to the size of small dogs. Tame too, these guys would come right up to the fence dancing with excitement in the hope that we had food for them. I noted with surprise that when the largest one, a Giant Otter called "unknown name" decided he was bored, he grabbed his food dish with his teeth and threw it into the pond, before leaping after it and grappling with it in much the same way that a dog would play with a toy.
When he was tempted back to land by a bowl full of fish, the guy tucked into it. Damn, those things are noisy eaters.
It was a good day out. Granted, I managed to lose the eyepiece off my camera (it's probably in a stream somewhere now) but it was a good day nonetheless.
Today!
Today, I crawled into bed reluctantly at about 4am. Having just eaten, I didn't sleep particularly well, and it was gone 5am before I fell asleep.
At 9am, my mum sticks her head round the door, and asks me if I want to go to Fountains Abbey. Of course, I was happy to go, eager even, as I'd always wanted to go and see what it was like. The sun was out, the weather was (very!) hot, and it was a beautiful day.
On the way there, we stopped in Ripon for a bit of lunch - and this is where I go off on a tangent...
Salad!
I've never really been a fan of salad. I'm not a panda so I don't see any benefit in eating leaves and stuff like that. Don't get me wrong, I love fruit but lettuce and stuff like that? No thanks.
But, my mum took me along to a place in Ripon called "The Warehouse", despite its name, a rather quaint olde-english cafe/tearoom thing. Fair enough, nto KFC but then I'm not paying am I :-).
Following my mum's advice, I ordered a ham salad, and I was amazed by what turned up.
This thing was fantastic - I didn't wanna take a photo cos people would have looked at me weird, but it was easily the best salad I've ever had.
Loads of lettuce, onions, cucumber, coleslaw, potato salad, eggs, tomato, and nice thick tender and incredibly tasty cuts of ham, served with a hot breadroll and butter that ISN'T flash frozen before being sold.
Sure a salad is a salad is a salad, but this was good! A tad expensive at nearly £7, but very very good! The best salad I've ever had.
Check out the place, it's a bit... Well, suited to senior citizens, but the food is really good.
After stocking up on pork crunch (I love the stuff!), we eventually made our way to the Abbey, about 20 minutes out of the town.
I'm not going to go into the history of the place because there's already a link to the wiki article up there somewhere. But it was fascinating walking around the place, and seeing these magnificent buildings still (partially) standing after so many hundreds of years. Testament to the skill of their builders, and to the care of their er, carers, no doubt.
And yet. As I said to my mum after a fantastic day taking photos of this and that, the beautiful scenery, the gorgeous sunshine, fields coloured white or purple by thousands of flowers, I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad to see the abbey in that condition.
At its peak, the place would have been huge. The abbey itself is a large building even by modern standards, and it was surrounded by many smaller buildings each with its own purpose and function, all built in this fantastic Cistercian architectural style.
Today, it lies in ruins, inhabited by no one except squadrons of pigeons and families of tourists.
It seems that the place is being built back up very slowly, but never far from my thoughts was the fact that this place was every bit a cemetery for an entire community, as it was a museum dedicated to their way of life. It was beautiful, stunning, and sad in equal measure.
That said, as my mum says, things change, and the communities that the abbey housed didn't die, they just moved on. Apparently Cistercianism is alive and well, elsewhere in Europe.
Not that I share their religious beliefs of course, or any at all, for that matter. But nevertheless, it is nice to know that the community avoided destruction.
But hey, I'm a tourist, not a historical curator.
A beautiful day, a really nice day out :-).
If I seemed a little distracted or noncommital, please bear in mind that I started falling asleep about 3 hours ago on the way home, and at the moment am only awake because of coffee. If I don't sound like I'm concentrating, it's because at the moment, I'm not really with it - sorry!
Still, here are some photos (In no particular order).
Have fun!
But, my mum took me along to a place in Ripon called "The Warehouse", despite its name, a rather quaint olde-english cafe/tearoom thing. Fair enough, nto KFC but then I'm not paying am I :-).
Following my mum's advice, I ordered a ham salad, and I was amazed by what turned up.
This thing was fantastic - I didn't wanna take a photo cos people would have looked at me weird, but it was easily the best salad I've ever had.
Loads of lettuce, onions, cucumber, coleslaw, potato salad, eggs, tomato, and nice thick tender and incredibly tasty cuts of ham, served with a hot breadroll and butter that ISN'T flash frozen before being sold.
Sure a salad is a salad is a salad, but this was good! A tad expensive at nearly £7, but very very good! The best salad I've ever had.
Check out the place, it's a bit... Well, suited to senior citizens, but the food is really good.
After stocking up on pork crunch (I love the stuff!), we eventually made our way to the Abbey, about 20 minutes out of the town.
Abbey!
I'm not going to go into the history of the place because there's already a link to the wiki article up there somewhere. But it was fascinating walking around the place, and seeing these magnificent buildings still (partially) standing after so many hundreds of years. Testament to the skill of their builders, and to the care of their er, carers, no doubt.
And yet. As I said to my mum after a fantastic day taking photos of this and that, the beautiful scenery, the gorgeous sunshine, fields coloured white or purple by thousands of flowers, I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad to see the abbey in that condition.
At its peak, the place would have been huge. The abbey itself is a large building even by modern standards, and it was surrounded by many smaller buildings each with its own purpose and function, all built in this fantastic Cistercian architectural style.
Today, it lies in ruins, inhabited by no one except squadrons of pigeons and families of tourists.
It seems that the place is being built back up very slowly, but never far from my thoughts was the fact that this place was every bit a cemetery for an entire community, as it was a museum dedicated to their way of life. It was beautiful, stunning, and sad in equal measure.
That said, as my mum says, things change, and the communities that the abbey housed didn't die, they just moved on. Apparently Cistercianism is alive and well, elsewhere in Europe.
Not that I share their religious beliefs of course, or any at all, for that matter. But nevertheless, it is nice to know that the community avoided destruction.
But hey, I'm a tourist, not a historical curator.
A beautiful day, a really nice day out :-).
If I seemed a little distracted or noncommital, please bear in mind that I started falling asleep about 3 hours ago on the way home, and at the moment am only awake because of coffee. If I don't sound like I'm concentrating, it's because at the moment, I'm not really with it - sorry!
Still, here are some photos (In no particular order).
Have fun!
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