A week or so ago, Bill and I set out to drive the hour & a half or so to the town of Hawes. Hawes is in Wensleydale, smack dab in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and is famous for their cheese. If you've ever watched Wallace and Gromit, you're familiar with Wensleydale cheese. It is yummy, yummy, yummy cheese!
We took our good cameras and decided to stop if we saw something we wanted to photograph. We were on the road only a half hour or so when we spotted one of the many (many, many) small churches that dot the English countryside. This one didn't differ much from the others, but it had an easy pull-off-and-park area nearby, so we parked, grabbed our cameras, and took a few snapshots.
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| Yorkshire church |
Inside they had handmade cushions in front of every seat. My favorite was the Yorkshire rose, below. The white rose of Yorkshire is found all over the place - in fact I am just beginning to crochet a Yorkshire rose blanket as a memento of our time here.
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| Yorkshire rose cushion |
We drove a little farther down the road and I spotted a sign for Middleham castle. The castle played a huge part in history as it was Richard III's castle and primary residence during his reign as King of England. (Spoiler alert: it did not end well for him.) I had learned all about the castle in my history class, and decided we had to stop in for a few minutes.
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| Middleham castle yard |
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| Middleham castle |
It was really quite an impressive castle. Yes, it is in ruins, but you can really get a good feel for its layout and how it could have been a home and protector for so many people. There were a lot of neat doorways and rooms that you could explore, and even some second and third story access for panoramic views.
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| Bill exploring the castle |
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| Middleham castle's great hall |
The kitchen area was really interesting. The stones around the fireplaces are still charred black, even though there has been no fire in them is several hundreds of years. There was also an interesting grain grinding area - I wonder who or what had to walk inside that circle for hours on end to grind the grain!
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| Grain grinding circle |
I wish I had taken an up-close picture of the statue of Richard III, as it depicted his scoliosis as an evil-looking dragon crawling up his back and over his shoulder. If Bill got a good picture of it, I'll have him post it at a later date.
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| Middleham castle and Richard III statue |
Up on the third floor viewing platform was a breathtaking view of Middleham village.
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| Middleham village |
Needless to say, we spent more than a few minutes at Middleham castle, so we hit the road again. Only to stop a few minutes later, just inside the Yorkshire Dales National Park to take some pictures of the view. Nope. Nothing gorgeous about that view. Nothing at all...
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| Yorkshire Dales National Park |
We finally made it to Hawes! it's 1:45; bring on the Wensleydale Creamery's cheesy lunch!! Wait, what? Your cafe closed at 1:30 today for a private function? But we're really HUNGRY!!! Grrrr - back into town for lunch, then back to the creamery for the dairy tour. Wait, what? Your dairy tours ended at 3:00 and it's now 3:30?!? Okay, fine! Let's buy some cheese and go home!
At least we found a really pretty waterfall in Hawes to photograph. Bill told me that next time we go to Hawes, we're getting up early and driving straight to the creamery - no stopping!! :-)
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| Hawes waterfall |
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