Wandering

On a whim, we decided to go to the Yorkshire Dales this weekend, inspired by the presence of the Grinton Lodge youth hostel in the town of Grinton. The Lodge is a former shooting lodge sitting on a hill (a very steep hill!) half a mile out of town, overlooking a lovely valley and shadowed by some of the peaks of the Dales. Because of some unfortunate class schedules, we couldn't leave on Friday night and so ended up walking to the train station on Saturday morning with hastily packed bags and only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to sustain us for the day. We barely made it in time for the train (the doors were already shut as we ran across the platform--it was like being in a movie!) and then sat back to watch the city melt into countryside as the train made its half an hour journey to the town of Darlington. We left the train at Darlington to catch a bus for the town of Richmond (note, still not our final destination). While waiting for the bus, we met a young German woman who was backpacking around England alone for a month and was headed into the Dales for her last week. The bus ran late, but we finally boarded and relaxed for another thirty minutes, greeted briefly by a distant rainbow arching over farm fields and woods. From Richmond, buses only leave four times a day for Grinton, so we had some time to spend wandering the town. We knew there was a famous castle there (called--surprise--Richmond Castle) and had planned to see it in our interval, but on reaching the front gates were informed that the castle was closed to the public because of high winds. It sounds strange, but the wind really was gusting with incredible force, and the castle grounds on the high bluff were exposed to all its fury. So we wandered back down through the town towards an abbey about a mile a way. While sitting by a river to eat our sandwiches, we had an interesting experience--it rained while sunny. I know that everyone thinks they've seen this happen, but this was really and truly rain out of a cloudless sky. We didn't believe it at first, but then after about fifteen minutes, clouds rolled in over the hill and it rained in earnest. Unfortunately, we foolishly forgot that we were in England and failed to pack any rain gear, so we got fairly wet, but the rain didn't last long and we continued walking to the abbey. The abbey was beautiful and there were some young children there leaping about and pretending to be princes and knights who added nicely to the atmosphere.

To make a long story short, we made it back to Richmond, got a quick cup of coffee, and caught our "bus" (it was a small bus, more of a van, with 12 seats and two friendly elderly people aboard) to Grinton. Leaving the next leg of the journey to a later post, I'll add some pictures here of the times described so far...