Another Little Holiday in Yorkshire 25th June - 1st July Part 2

Another Little Holiday in Yorkshire 25th June - 1st July  Part 2

Continuing on from Part One of this story :- 

On Saturday 25th we visited Thorp Perrow Arboretum which we'd found in our Gardeners' World 2 for 1 entry magazine!  The blurb says the park is unique in England because it's 100 acres are home to some very rare collections of trees some of which (in the park lands) date back as far as the 16th and 17th centuries. 

However, it wasn't just the trees that we'd gone to see!  The park is also home to about 100 birds of prey which included 🦅eagles 🦅 falcons and 🦉owls 🦉to name but a few, and while we were there they seemed quite happy to display their 🪶  feathers 🪶 in a show!

The first on stage were a couple of Caracaras by the names of George and Mildred!

George and Mildred with crops full of food!

They were very eager to get out of their cage and once they did they dashed about the arena looking for any odd ice cream or butty that they could steal from an unsuspecting spectators hands.

Next came a beautiful Eagle Owl

And finally a falcon who soared and dipped as he chased a Lure with prey attached!

And maybe this little chap should have hidden away in case 
one of the big birds thought he was dinner.  

After the show we wandered for a while longer in the gardens and wondered if we should have joined Penny the Pixie for afternoon tea!

But her neat little home wasn't quite big enough for us so we opted for a bench by the waterside where we sat and sipped coffee and munched cake instead!

On Sunday we couldn't quite decide what to do because with it being the weekend we thought that many of the local attractions might have been rammed!  However, in the end we settled on a circular walk along The Seven Bridges Valley Trail that would lead us into the National Trusts Fountains Abbey and Studley Water Park 

There are only 5 of the old rustic bridges left now and they crisscross the mostly
dry river bed of the Skell River

Studley Water Park - a lovely peaceful place to rest even on a busy sunny Sunday

Fountains Abbey

Monday saw us venture out to Malham Cove which we've visited before many  many many 🌙 moons ago!  

Malham Cove is a huge curving amphitheatre limestone rock cliff formation
that has a vertical face that stands about 260 feet high.  

However, we didn't head directly to the cove!  First of all we ventured towards Gordale Scar with the intention of climbing up the scar's waterfall😨 but when we got to the bottom of it we very quickly realised it was probably not the safest thing for a couple of old crumblies to do😂!

This was heading towards the Scar

And this was part of the Scar itself

So instead of climbing it we sat and had our picnic at the bottom of it!

Maybe if we'd had this chap's 🕷️ Spiderman's 🕷️ capabilities
we might have tried the climb

But playing it safe we retraced our steps for a short way and then followed a footpath through several miles of rock strewn fields before we eventually climbed onto the top of the cove which has a deeply eroded limestone surface - it would have been very easy to fall down one of the craters!

Looks like Big Foot must have visited at sometime in the distant past!

All in all we had a fantastic day and both agreed that Malham is somewhere we'll have to revisit in the near future!

However, we're unlikely to say the same for  Ilkley Moor which we visited on Tuesday!  I'm not quite sure why we were unimpressed by it; maybe it was because the sun was hiding behind thick cloud, maybe it was because we were still a bit tired from our long walk the previous day, or maybe it was because for much of the way we were walking through narrow paths that were lined by high ferns that eventually gave way to dark heather!  

We parked our car in a free space high above the spa town of Ilkley, and from there we continued to climb upwards to a plateau that looked directly down onto the town!

And it was only after several more miles that the landscape became more interesting!  First we found a Celtic Cross with someone hiding behind it.........

..........and when we reached The Buck Stones that legend says were scattered there by a giants wife!

Further on still we came across a memorial to a Halifax Bomber that crashed on the Moor in 1944 and on the plaque there was a request!  It read 'When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave life today'

Part of the wreckage

A bit of research also revealed more items of interest!  The Moor rises 1,319 feet above sea level and it's well known for the song 'On Ilkley Moor Baht'at'!  But maybe a less well known  tale is that of a retired policeman who thought he saw an 👽alien  👽 on the Moor back in 1987!  Apparently he saw a strange creature rush up the hill and as it went it waved threateningly to him, then later he saw a dome topped craft shoot into the air at a blinding speed!  I'm glad to say nothing quite as exciting as that happened while we were there!

Anyway, back to our story for Wednesday which we'd initially decided would be a day off! However, John will always say I don't really know how to sit still, and by lunch time I'd got the fidgets😂!  Therefore, I suggested a little trip to the near by Valley Gardens in Harrogate, and following a deep sigh 🙄 he agreed as long as lunch was thrown in, and that turned out to be fish and chips in the park!  

The flower displays were lovely and lots of them were themed for the Jubilee 

And there were several pretty statues as well!

But probably the most interesting bit was the Bogs Field where a greater number of unique mineral springs come to the surface than at any other location in the world.  Apparently 36 of Harrogate's 88 mineral wells are found in the park and no two are alike in their water chemistry.  The waters are Magmatic or Plutonic and have never existed as rain water having flowed deep beneath the earth for at least 20,000 years before rising to the surface through vertical shafts in the strata.  History has it that Bogs Field was investigated by the Victorians who piped the mineral waters to Royal Bath Hospital where different ones were used to treat conditions such as  rheumatic diseases, gout, anaemia and nervous dispositions!

One of the Well Heads

Thursday was our penultimate day here at The Cud Life Campsite and the weatherman had told us the big fat fib that it was going to rain for most of the day!  However, we completely ignored him and set of for Bolton Abbey, and we were very glad we did because not a drop of rain fell until about 6pm by which time we were back inside the nice dry warm confines of our caravan!

The Beautiful old ruins of Bolton Abbey which can trace it's history
back to the 12th Century. 

However, it wasn't just the ruins that we'd come to see!  Our plan was to take a walk beside the River Wharfe and the map showed that we could trek along one side of the water to Barden Bridge and then back down the other side through Strid Wood.

And after coughing up our £15 parking charge that was exactly what we did!  However our first challenge was to get across the river and to do that we could have toddled across the 60 slippery wet stepping stones, that in years gone by, provided the only way across for the lay workers at the Priory😨 - but rather than do that we used the bridge which ensured we stayed dry for the rest of our walk!

 

A short way into our walk we came across a log with lots of coins hammered into it!  I think John was trying to recoup some of our parking charge but he couldn't quite grasp them!

After about 3 miles we came across this lovely peaceful, tranquil, serene, quiet and restful place to have our picnic ....... but that didn't last for long!  We'd just finished munching our sarnies when a school teacher came over and apologised because our lovely spot was about to be invaded by hordes of school kids who had picked the same spot for their lunch!  Needless to say, we gulped our coffee in double quick time before skedaddling further up steam😂 

And then once we'd crossed the water and walked most of the way back I decided I needed a quick rest and found the perfect place to do it!

Then towards the end of our walk we came across this monument to Frederick Charles Cavendish

Can you work out what year he was born? (the answer is at the bottom of the page)

And that brings us around to Friday but I'm writing this on Thursday!  Tomorrow we'll be setting off for 12 nights on another Camping and Caravan Certified Site at Flamborough and we're just keeping everything crossed that the weatherman has made another BIG mistake because he's telling us it's going to rain 🐱s and 🐕s so if he's right we're going to get rather wet when we take our awning down in the morning🌧️ ☂ ☔.

So it's goodbye from us here near Ripley and it'll be hello again in a few days time in Flamborough😘 

(And the answer is 1836)