Tag Archives: United Kingdom

Wintercrag Farm

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From Askham I booked two nights at Wintercrag Farm (a name that sounds very Game of Thrones, I think you’ll agree) in Martindale. As far as I can tell, Martindale comprises of four buildings and two of them are farms and two of them are churches. I can’t tell if this means the original locals were extremely pious or hated each other so much they couldn’t worship in the same building. Either way, both churches are now disused.

The house sits just over a little beck with a lovely view down the valley.

The farmers breed dogs, mainly collies, kelpie/collie mixes and terriers. I’ve seen a few of the farm dogs around but the breeding dogs are in a shed so I haven’t seen them as yet. I feel kind of bad about asking, knowing how busy farmers are, but I also really want to see them.

I had to carry all my food with me as there no shops at all within easy walking distance, so I’ve been mainly living on porridge, tomatoes, apples, cheese and flatbread. I did buy myself one treat in Pooley Bridge.

Locally made, absolutely delicious!

It’s only a small bottle (500ml) probably a bit too much to drink in only two nights but I’m willing to make that sacrifice. The man in the shop said it was perfect for drinking straight and he was right!

The rental accommodation at the farm is the entire upstairs. There are three bedrooms but I’m the only person here so I got to pick my own room.

I chose the one with the stag theme.
Wallpaper close-up.

There is a kitchen and bathroom, which are nice to have to myself. When we renovated our home we got rid of our bathtub, but I’ve had nothing but baths since I got here, they’re so nice after a long day walking.

The only negative thing I have to say about the place is the way the floors creak. There is not a spot on the entire second floor that doesn’t creak like something out of a horror movie. I mentioned it to the owner but she said they don’t notice it. If it was me downstairs I’d go mad within hours.

Also, the carpet is quite something.

This morning I had a cup of porridge then set out up the fell at the back of the farm. It was a bit precipitous in places but I made it up to the first hill reasonably easily. Some thoughtful person had put a bench in a nice spot and I paused to enjoy the weather.

I then followed the ridge along a bit, stopping to talk to a man who was walking with his dog. It turned out he was from Askham, which was quite a coincidence, seeing as there wouldn’t be more than 200 people living there and he was the first person I’d spoken to since I left Askham, apart from the people at the farm.

He was very nice but told me he was 85 then proceeded to climb up and out of sight so quickly that I felt quite demoralised. Being almost 50, I don’t mind being overtaken by people under the age of 60, 70 at a stretch, but 85 is just ridiculous. Anyhow, I clambered up over rocks and along narrow paths but eventually decided it was too steep and turned around and went back down.

Looking back.

I quite like a bit of scrambling, but not when there is a steep drop right beside me. Better safe than sorry!

I made it back to the farmhouse for lunch then a nap that was supposed to be an hour long but was more like three. I think yesterday’s hike with my full backpack had been more exhausting than I’d realised and I also felt like I was getting a bit of a cold.

In the afternoon I walked across the road and up the hill a little, watching the farm dogs herd the sheep down from the fells (there’s a video on my instagram if anyone is interested: zenandtheart is my username), then I took a walk down the floor of the valley along the road. I saw some sheep with their lambs in a barn and lots of very picturesque buildings.

For dinner I made my two minute noodles (apparently they are THREE minute noodles in the uk, ick) with a sachet of tuna, cherry tomatoes and chopped up cheddar (gourmet!) and afterwards I finished off the vodka. It’s only 20% so it was like having about 3 glasses of wine but the wine was like the caramel sauce you put on ice cream when you were a kid. After a while it was a bit too sweet but I bravely managed to finish it all.

May I share my trick for having a nice cold drink in an Airbnb with no ice tray? Just fill several glasses with about a centimetre of water, freeze them when you first arrive and voila! Iced beverages. I did chill the vodka too, but I wanted to drink it slowly.

Tomorrow I’m going to walk to Patterdale, which is about eight km/five miles, and hope there’s room in the YHA. If there isn’t maybe I’ll suck it up and actually do some camping!

Luke told me two things today, one is that I make a lot of typos in the blog, which I hope you’ll all write off as jet lag and not me being too lazy to edit, or worse, not knowing how to spell or construct a sentence! Also that at least one person from his work has been reading the blog, so hi to Luke’s workmate! I hope you’re enjoying it, I’m sure it’ll be more interesting once Luke starts contributing too.

Goodnight!

This is Winnie, I have no idea what kind of dog she is but she hugs my leg then closes her eyes and leans on me.
The working dogs are a lot less interested in pats.

The Peak District and Makeney Hall

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Apologies to the handful of people who check the blog with any regularity, I’ve really fallen off the regular-posting bandwagon these last few weeks. Partially because we’ve been lazy and haven’t done a lot of noteworthy things and partly because when there’s other people around I try to be more social. Hopefully I’ll catch up before we get home in a week and a half.

We start at the end of the last post – catching the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool.

After a 4:30am breakfast, the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool disgorges it’s passengers at the cruel hour of 5:30am, which meant we had a long day to fill before booking into our accommodation for that night.

Jess and Luke loved the croissants onboard and we could see why all the truck drivers were virtually spherical. Excellent food and service on the overnight P&O ferry!

We filled our day by first taking a drive to Edale, a little village in the Peak District and well known to me as the start/end of the Pennine Way, England’s most well known long distance trail. Possibly also it’s most grueling too. Not that I’ve done it, but it was nice to take a drive through the gorgeous hills and then stop for a cup of tea at the campsite cafe, once it opened. We were seriously early.

A classic British pub. Hopefully we’ll be back one day during opening hours.

Next we drove to Chatsworth farm house and cafe for a slice of cake and more tea. The range of stuff on sale was very tempting (and pricey) and I bought a few things for Andrew and some tasty treats for us too, including a ginger brack (a type of cake that keeps well) to put in my package of stuff to send home.

Fancy farm shop pies.

After the cafe we took a quick drive through the actual Chatsworth estate but we were all a bit too knackered to be bothered with the entry price and doing much walking around. The weather was glorious though and the building looked magnificent.

Last stop before our hotel was a leisurely walk around Bakewell, a very pretty, touristy and well-kept northern town. We looked through a few shops then made our way to Makeney Hall. As I’d thought the Lake District was too far to drive and our preferred hotel there wasn’t available anyhow and we thought it would be nice to spend one night in a relatively fancy country house/hotel and Makeney Hall looked nice and was in about the right location.

The hotel ended up looking quite nice on the outside but having a somewhat run-down feeling in the interior. Tatty carpet, dirty windows in the restaurant, and the bedrooms were pretty ordinary.

We had booked an afternoon tea and we were the only people in the spacious dining room. The food was nice and the ambience improved once we disconnected the country/pop music playlist on the staff iPad and connected my phone with more suitable classical music. Luckily the staff weren’t fussed.

All in all, not a hotel I’d recommend but we enjoyed taking a walk in the evening and watching the rabbits and squirrels in the garden.

The next day we drove to Cambridge for two nights then spent our last week in London, where we saw a number of plays and had high tea on a bus! More about the next post.

The Harrogate Autumn Flower and Vegetable Show!

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Jess, Luke and I were spending two nights in Harrogate, a city none of us knew anything about, in order to visit the Harrogate show.

A year or two ago I started following a blogger who is a very successful allotment gardener and who made videos and talked a lot about entering his vegetables into shows. He regularly grew enormous carrots, onions and a variety of other things and I became entranced with it all and decided to go see it for myself.

Unfortunately for Luke it meant spending his 36th birthday weekend watching me looking at vegetables but it was a price I was willing for him to pay. I booked the tickets a few weeks prior and a nice Airbnb apartment right in the middle of Harrogate.

The apartment turned out to be absolutely wonderful – probably one of the best we’ve ever stayed in. It was on the third storey and had panoramic views over the town centre.

Jess researched somewhere to eat on our first day and settled on Betty’s, a restaurant that is quite famous locally. We were shown to a downstairs room that was paneled with gorgeous marquetry artworks showing scenes of Yorkshire and Alsace. It turned out the food was a mix of Swiss and English, which made the whole experience rather interesting for us as we’d just visited Switzerland and Alsace before coming back to England.

All the work was done by an Alsatian artist named Spindler.

Jess has an afternoon tea and we had macaroni and cheese. Perfect!

A very nice start to our stay in Harrogate and we were all immediately taken with the town, which had a very prosperous and Victorian air.

The following day we headed to the Autumn show on the shuttle bus, arriving just after the gates opened. I had no idea how busy the day would be but at the time we arrived there was almost no one there, which made it much easier to take photos of the exhibits. By the time we left it had filled up quite a bit but I imagine there were still tickets available on the gate.

First stop was the flower hall.

The majority of flowers on display were chrysanthemums, dahlias, gladioli and roses, with a few lilies and fuchsias. The dahlias were my favourite.

Then it was on to the vegetables and fruit.

There are two main kinds of vegetable competition. One is for perfect sets of vegetables, as with the groups of onions above and the tomatoes and leeks below. Often size is a factor as well – the largest matching set is best.

The second main category is for the largest vegetables. These are often extremely ugly.

This man grew a pumpkin that weighed over 300kg and said he had a bigger one on the vine at home! I had thought large vegetables were often tasteless but he said this one was good to eat and would go to soup kitchens etc.

Heirloom apple and pear varieties were on display and they often had amusing names.

There was also a number of bonsai competitions and people selling them. This one was best in show. It must be hard being a bonsai competitor knowing that something like this was going to keep being entered every year. At least the vegetable gardeners get a fresh start each time.

Apart from produce there were marquees of crafts for sale and lots of food, from fudge to pork pies. We bought a few things but I looked longingly at much more! There were also lots of people selling garden furniture, pizza ovens, patios, sculptures and lots of food available on site.

We spent about half a day wandering around and enjoyed it a lot. An event not many tourists would go and see perhaps, but we all had a good time and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in that sort of thing.

Next: The Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Here Comes The Planet 34 – England 08

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Our UK camping and road trip special! We buy a whole heap of camping gear and take Van Failen through the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District and all manner of places in between.

Also, BABY WEASELS! 😀 😀

(Baby Weasels… baby weasels… hiding in a wall, baby weasels…)