Day 1
We had our breakfast and the first plan for the day was to drive to Durham and visit Durham Cathedral. Durham is also a university town and at ones stage in our planning Adrienne was looking at staying there but it was very hard to find any accommodation and any she could was very expensive. She found out eventually it was graduation time so places to stay were booked out !
Well one thing we hadn’t planned for was the Cathedral being closed because of the graduations but yes, it was being used for the graduations over nearly a week so no access to visitors ! Instead we had a quick look around the Visitor Centre and they gave us a few pointers of where to fill in our time instead. We walked down to the river which gave us a good view back up to the cathedral and then walked through the town to the market square and back to the car.
Our next stop was close to our final location for the day in Malton. Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire. It is a private residence and has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years. The house itself may be familiar if you watched various TV programmes, including Brideshead Revisited, Barry Lyndon and Bridgerton.
The estate is enormous – both inside and out. It was lunchtime when we arrived so we had sandwiches in one of the three cafes – one near the main house – and then took the tour of the sections open in the house. We entered via a side wing and vast hallways wind along to the main entry hall under the huge dome. During WWII the house was used as a girls school and a fire in 1940 caused significant damage to some of the upper rooms and the dome collapsed in a fire. Two of the direct heirs were killed in WWII and when the next in line returned made the decision to restore the property and open it for public use. The dome was replaced in the 1960s but some of the upper rooms are still waiting refurbishment now basically the bare stone walls.
We completed the inside tour then wandered around some of the vast outside, around the central fountain at the rear of the property – in some ways more grand looking than the front – then to one of the distant follies and back through the “wilderness area”. Whilst many of the “historic” properties are National Trust or English Heritage and essentially need the money to maintain and keep these alive for future generations to enjoy, in some ways it is a bit obscene that you pay large sums of money for the upkeep of a vast, obviously wealthy, private home, albeit on a historical and grand property.
Back at the car we moved on into Malton to the Talbot Hotel. It is part of the same group we stayed with in Wells earlier in the tour. Luckily we are on the ground floor, though it is a bit of a trek to get the bags through reception, through the bar, down a corridor into another wing – its a very nice room though with a lovely view. We ate in the bar and both commented we thought the meal was exceptional – I had a confir pork belly for starter and the Pie of the Day and Adrienne had parsnip soup and Pan Fried Chicken Supreme – such fresh ingrediants !
Day 2
Today’s plan was to look around the North Yorkshire Moors and nearby area. Our main stop was Whitby on the coast but we had quite a drive through parts of the Moors. The landscape is quite amazing – leaving green, lush fields and tree lined hills into stark, barren open countryside, still very green and wall to wall sheep but in stark contrast. At least here the narrow roads had no high hedges so you could see cars coming from a mile away !
In one section we past some old furnaces which were originally iron kilns in the hillside and old slag heaps now covered in grass. From here we had a steep descent into another pristine village below the moors before climbing again back into moor country toward Whitby.Further along the way we stopped at the Danby Beacon.
It holds a prominent place in English history, serving as a vital early warning system and communication tool throughout various periods of conflict and upheaval. From the Roman occupation of Britain, King Edward III’s era and the Dutch Wars to the Jacobite Rebellion, the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic times, the beacon has played a crucial role in safeguarding England. Moreover, its involvement during the Second World War as a radar station showcases its enduring importance and adaptability throughout the centuries.
We then made our may into Whitby and the first stop was the ruins of Whitby Abbey on the southern side of the harbour. Originally a 7th century Christian monastery it later bacame a Benedictine abbey then met its fate, like the others, at the hands of Henry VIII. It was also used as the setting of the novel Dracula which featured Count Dracula as a creature resembling a large dog which came ashore at the headland and ran up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St Mary’s Church in the shadow of the Whitby Abbey ruins.
We then drove around to the northern side of the harbour and walked into the town. Whitby was also the beginning of the career of our very own Captain James Cook who began as an apprentice to Captain John Walker in his shipping business in 1746, living in the attic of his house overlooking the harbour. The house is now the James Cook Museum which we visited. Mind you, you can see why Cook might have wanted to leave Whitby on those voyages – one strip of the harbour is a sleazy Las Vegas wannabe strip and tourist trap which somewhat spoils the niceness of Whitby as a town otherwise.
And I’ve finally decided that the “Pay and Display” parking system is a pain in the butt ! Nearly everyone is a different type of machine, many don’t work or crash during the transaction, the detail that you can actually pay for doesn’t match what is on the display and in many cases it is a ripoff – with a minimum “all day” charge for a place you are likely to stop for an hour if you are lucky ! And its not just we tourists – there are numberous “locals” obviously holidaying haveing the same frustration with the machines ! “Blimey, this is horrible”
Back to Whitby and we managed to find a nice “Fish & Chip” restaurant on the headland for lunch which was tasty despite a bit of a wait – someone on the staff “had gone home feeling poorly” so it was taking time to get orders out. Despite that, my cod with chips and mushy peas was worth the wait !
Finally on the way back to Malton we stopped at Rievaulx Abbey, another ruined abbey but quite enormous and tucked away in a quaint valley near the little town of Helmsley. It was a Cistercian abbey founded in 1132 by 12 monks from France. Its remote location helped it prosper and in its prime there were around 640 monks at its peak. It is said to have been one of the great abbeys in England – certainly one of the biggest we have seen – and was again a victim of Henry VIII when seized in 1538. Some of the technolgies these monks built at the time – including a complex drainage system for the vast site – were way ahead of the times.
We arrived back in Malton late afternoon and decided to try an Italian restaurant down in the towm for dinner. La Trattoria was a great choice as we had bread toast, oils and olives for starters and both had very tasty rizzotto dishes for mains. We can say that we have liked Yorkshire – the pretty villages and countryside and the stunning scenery – very much !