Gallivanting Geismom: Yorkshire Dales

Tonight we are staying at the Dryburgh Abbey Hotel, in that middle top floor room which has a lovely view of the River Tweed.

That was quite unexpected since there were no river views when I booked the room, so something must have changed, and we certainly aren't complaining!

The drive here was calm and quite peaceful for a change of pace. We started out from our B&B around 10:30 AM and drove to Wycliffe, which is near Hutton Magna in County Durham on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. Here St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church sits perched at the top of a hill, graced by acres of green grass and grazing sheep all around.

The original church here was built in 1849, and the structure that we see today was rebuilt in the mid 1870's. It has some beautiful architectural features.

A guitarist with a melodious voice graced us with melodies throughout the service. It was certainly an uplifting experience and I was grateful that I had managed to find this gem that worked into our travel schedule.

After mass, we began the drive to Scotland, which we knew would take about three hours. The weather was fabulous, and the drive was very calm and scenic. What else could we ask for?

We found a place to stop for tea about half way. The proprietor was very excited to have two Americans in house, and she was more than happy to ring us up some scones, cream, jam and tea.

They were bursting with blueberries and had a hint of lemon. Delicious!

Marty went in to settle the bill, and the next thing I knew, he was coming out of the shop with photos of two of the scone recipes. Not too surprising there. I'd share them but I'd hate to cut into their business.

Back on the road, and soon we were crossing the border into Scotland, admiring the gorgeous rolling hills in the distance, and headed to our destination.

We knew we were close when I spied the black sheep.

We checked in and were told that our room was 218, just on the second floor. We began the climb up the ornate curved staircase

and then I remembered that in Scotland, the second floor is really the third floor as we know it, so it was another round of stairs, down the hall, up three more steps, turn right, and there it was! The White Wing room.

The sun was shining brilliantly into the room, so I couldn't get any photos of the River Tweed, but I hope to capture some in the morning.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but this hotel has fishing rights to the River Tweed, so while Marty went out to test his flies,

I took a little walk around the grounds, admiring the abbey ruins that are right next door.

We'd visited the grounds many years ago when Marty was working in Scotland. The author Walter C Scott is buried there in a special plot next to his wife.

Marty had no luck with the fishing, but we certainly had an enjoyable evening relaxing down in the lobby. The decor is entertaining. Note the pheasant displayed on top of the ornate mantle.

and then there's the large fish on the wall in the background.

I'd say that we are definitely in Marty's happy place!

Tomorrow's our last day here and we hope to make the most of it.

Thanks for following along!

Until next time...

Marty snuck out early this morning while I chose to relax in our comfy room. But, I could easily spy his fishing antics from the window.

He was very excited to have caught his very first British fish, even though it is barely the size of his hand.

And this was before we even had breakfast! Which, by the way, was excellent. Simple food cooked to perfection. You just can't ask for more than that, can you?

My schedule for today was relatively low key: visit the Ribblehead Visitor center and the Wensleydale Creamery as they are both within easy driving distance of our B&,B and explore the Buttertubs Pass for a bit of added adventure.

Neil, the proprietor here, suggested that we make the drive to Dent as well, after visiting Ribblehead, so we added that to the list.

So we headed towards the first visitor center. Let me mention here that the roads are very narrow with either hedgerows or stone walls hugging both sides, so when an auto is coming in the opposite direction, someone has to give way....and sometimes that can be very tricky. With the twists and turns, blind corners and steep hills that suddenly seem to come to a halt, it can be a bit nerve wracking for the passenger (me) in the car. Probably because the hedgerows and stone walls are staring ME in the face, not the driver, who was actually having a blast zipping around while I was holding on for dear life.

The main road to the visitor center was fairly open, and we were certainly surprised to come over a hill and see that both sides were lined with parked cars, making traveling a bit tight in two directions. Suddenly there were roadsters zipping by in the opposite direction as well as other speedy cars, and I thought that perhaps some kind of event was happening. Marty was going to park the car somewhere along this road following suit with everyone else, but I managed to convince him to continue on to the sign for the visitor center, and turn up the drive. Sure enough, at the end of the drive stood the building and only one car parked in the lot. That solved that problem. But, here is a photo of what we had passed on the road.

Can you see the lines of cars? When we asked at the center, we were told that this was pretty typical for a Saturday. People come out to walk, parking their cars along the road. I was grateful that we didn't have to make an even longer trek!

The Ribblehead Visitor Center is in the train station lobby, and it is run by volunteers who are extremely eager to please. Both the man and the woman tending the place were extremely entertaining and we both left chuckling at their humor.

There were information boards inside, giving the history of the station. One thing that caught my eye was this original ticket machine that still stands in place. Today, everyone just purchases a ticket on the train, so it is entirely obsolete.

The station has stood here since 1875 as part of the Midland Railway that connected London to Scotland. Trains were running on this line, stopping at this station until 1970 when it became unstaffed and had no northbound platform. The building fell into disrepair. But the Settle & Carlisle Railway Trust saved the station, built a new northbound platform in 1993, and renovated it in 2000.

Next door is the station master's house, which you can actually rent to stay if you are interested. I read in the museum that all of the station master houses were identical in structure, and as we drove around today, passing several stations, it was obvious that was the case as they all looked like this one.

And here is what we came to see. This is the view from the parking lot at the visitor center.

The Ribblehead viaduct was built from stone from nearby quarries, using one and a half million bricks when it was constructed. The work began in 1869 and was finished in 1876. However, the local bricks did not hold up to the freezing cold winters and they needed to be replaced in 40 years. It was set to close due to expense of repair, but in 1989 work began to restore it to the amazing structure that it is today.

It has 24 arches spanning 400 meters long and 32 meters high. If you look closely, you can see Marty standing at the foot of the arches in the photo below.

A memorial stone pays tribute to the first round of men who originally constructed the viaduct and the most recent group who reinforced the structure that you see today.

We were actually lucky enough to see a train crossing over the viaduct when first arriving and it certainly does look impressive.

We hiked down the path to get a closer look, and, as you can see, it was a bit windy today.

Of course, we had to hike back up the hill to the visitor center lot to retrieve the car and we both decided to follow Neil's advice and head to Dent.

There was a sign saying "Road Closed Ahead", but there was no sign of a closure, so we continued on, up and down the winding roads, and could see a second viaduct in the distance. What an amazing view!

We made it to the foot of the viaduct and guess what? The road was closed. Well at least we had been prepared! So, we turned around and I snapped this photo just beneath the structure.

We decided to head to the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes, since that had been on the agenda. Unfortunately, the place was buzzing with people. We did choose to try a Wensleydale Cheese scone complete with the Wensleydale Butter and found a quiet spot in the corner to enjoy our treat.

And this was the view from the cafe at the Creamery.

I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed as I had hoped for a better experience here, but with so many people, I really didn't want to stick round long.

Marty did manage to spot Wallace

We're not sure what happened to Gromit. He must have been hiding somewhere.

At this point, we decided to try a different approach to Dent, and we headed out on the roads, but this time, they were the narrow type mentioned earlier in the blog. Narrow, windy, and changing drastically in elevation as we traveled up and down, never knowing what would be around the next corner.

And, once again, we spotted yet another viaduct.

Dent proved to be quite charming.

At one point, a caravan of roadsters came rushing by...at least 20 open top small cars zooming around the village. Actually, I found it quite amusing that the people were wearing thick knit caps on their heads, with scarves wrapped around their necks, all while the top of the car was open. Guess there must be some excitement in that.

We opted to take a peak in the Dent heritage center, and that was quite interesting in itself. It was a combination tea room/ wool shop/ museum where one buys a ticket and is free to just walk around the place. If you thought Mr. Straw's house was stressful, (from an earlier blog this week), then this would definitely cause anxiety. It looked like they had taken stuff from just about anyone's family home in Dent and shoved into different rooms. In all fairness, there were a lot of descriptions so that one would know what one was seeing.

For instance, there was this cream separator.

and a milk bottler

But this buggy in the corner had a moving mannequin that scared the bejeepers out of me at first.

There were silly items like pig marionettes

And scads of baking/cooking/ knitting/ weaving, etc items as well. But those had a sign stating no photographs be taken, so I respected that, and it's probably for the better because it would be too tempting to share some of it here.

I was very surprised to learn that marble was once quarried here in the mid 19th century. Some of it was exported to Russia for a fireplace that is in the Winter Palace of the Tsar.

The Dent marble industry declined when Italian marble was available at much less cost so it is longer active. I'm always amazed at the information in some of these little places.

After walking through the town, we decided that it was time to try the Buttertubs pass, so we had to head back up and over the windy, hill, blind corner road to get to the bottom of the pass. Marty was driving along when suddenly, zipping around the corner came the lead caravan driver mentioned earlier. So, Marty had to back up the car and squeeze over to the left for the car to pass. The driver gave him the thumbs up sign, as did the driver behind him, and the next one behind him, until ten of the cars had gone by. We knew there were a lot more, but there seemed to be a lull. So, Marty started forward, this time a bit more cautiously, as he knew there had to be more drivers that would suddenly pop around the corner.

And, true to form, there were more, but they seemed to be breaking up in numbers. They were obviously all out for a looped joy ride, and they did seem to be having a grand time. We were nearly at the end of this road when the last, lone driver came along. He seemed a bit perturbed. Perhaps he was the loser of the race, who knows?

We drove the Buttertubs pass, which did have some amazing views. The road was actually wider than what we had been driving on, but it did get to some points where there were just shiny markers on the sides, with obvious steep drops down an embankment. Luckily, we didn't encounter many people. I don't have any photos as I was holding onto Marty's camera since he wanted to tape the experience, and he needed two hands to drive, since it's a manual transmission.

The views were pretty amazing. Let me know if you want to see the film.

From here we crossed up and over the hill back to Askrigg then onto our B&B. Once again, we traveled high in elevation. Marty stopped so that I could take some photos of the views.