Up North With The Yorkies

My first visit to the English county of Yorkshire did not disappoint, despite the questionable weather that greeted me. I spent the bank holiday weekend staying with my amazing family up north in Knaresborough and venturing around the region to see as much as possible.

I arrived via train to Leeds and then onto the old spa town of Harrogate on Friday night where I was greeted by my cousin Clair’s husband Murry. He nominated himself chief tour guide for the weekend, along with the children from time to time, and Clair when she was up for it. Oliver is 15, which provides him an excuse for spending too much time with us, but the girls Molly (12) and Jessie (9) did join in on most of our Yorkshire activities. It makes me so happy to get to know this extended part of my Holmes family and I can hardly wait to spend more time with them in Tiree in August.

On Saturday morning in the misty fog and sporadic rain I was introduced to Knaresborough, a town that dates back to 1100 when it began to grow as a market town around Knaresborough Castle. The town has been passed through the centuries from Hugh de Morville, who led the four knights who murdered Archbishop Thomas Beckett at Canterbury Cathedral, to John of Gaunt in 1369. The castle fell in 1646 during the Civil War when citizens looted the stone. As a result, much of the town centre buildings are built with the very same castle stone.

Clair, Molly and I wandered along the waterside and had coffee and teacakes in a café that used to be a houseboat. Then we explored the Castle grounds, now just a scattering of ruins and a small museum, and carried on to the market square where England’s oldest chemist shop stands alongside modern shops and local pubs. We also visited Saint Robert’s Cave, a medieval hermit’s site along the River Nidd, which attracted thousands of pilgrims in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.

In the afternoon the whole family (minus Ollie) piled into the car to drive around the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, landscapes which would normally be stunningly colourful and stretching for miles. Due to weather restrictions we mostly peered out the windows at heavy mist and wet fields, but this did add to the tragically romantic atmosphere that I expected anyways, thanks to my youth spent reading the novels of the Bronte sisters. The Blubberhouse Moors, which inspired ‘Wuthering Heights’ (wuthering is a Yorkshire word that means turbulent weather), are up here. Because of the mist and fog, I could almost see tragic Heathcliff pining for his true love Catherine.

We continued on to Brimham Rocks, balancing formations on the moor of the same name, which have been around for hundreds of years, formed by erosion, glaciation and wind into the shapes of various animals like the Sphinx, the Watchdog, the Camel, the Turtle and the Dancing Bear. After walking around in the rain for a while we rewarded ourselves with local Risplith ice cream. I tried the gin and tonic flavour (with real gin), which started me on a downhill drinking spiral that carried into the early hours of Sunday morning.

Next we stopped for a pint of a Yorkshire-brewed lager, the Copper Dragon, and I spent the rest of the evening trying to sample as many more as I could, like Timothy Taylor’s and Black Sheep. After Clair cooked us a delicious dinner of fish pie Murry took me out on a pub crawl of Knaresborough where we sampled locally-brewed half pints along the way. We even stopped by a music hall where the 70s rock group Wishbone Ash were performing then carried on to Blind Jack’s where I was allowed behind the bar to pull a pint. Very fun.

The next day Murry, Molly and Jess took me into York for the day. If you’re not going to spend your hangover lying in bed, this is the town to recover in, with walks along the River Ouse, wanders through the shambles and along the old city walls, and a brisk climb up 275 steps to the top of the York Minster (though the actual count is in dispute thanks to Jess’s accurate tally the whole way up and down). We saw straight across Yorkshire from the very top and looked down to see exactly what else we wanted to visit in the town.

York is a walled city with a rich history and the site of major political events in its two millennia of existence. Founded by the Romans in 71 AD and called Eboracum after the British tribes who inhabited the area, it was the capital of Britannia Inferior until the end of Roman rule in 415 AD after serving as court for the Emperors Hadrian, Severus and Constantius I. Over its history it served as the capital of the Anglian Kingdom of Northumbria, the capital of the Viking settlement once it was captured in 866 AD, and following the Norman Conquest was named York. Situated halfway between the capitals of London and Edinburgh, the city has had a long past, and is certainly an interesting visit for anyone who enjoys both classic and modern history.

On bank holiday Monday, my last day up North, we drove to the east coast, since the Evans’ were going to be spending the rest of their half-term holiday at a friend’s place near the beach. Besides the slow pace we took in getting there – with traffic that brought me back to commutes out of Toronto on camping and cottaging weekends – it was definitely worth a windy afternoon on the beach before heading back to London. Jess, Molly and I ran into the freezing cold sea up to our ankles then we wandered along Filey Beach where I was introduced to the traditions of a typical British seaside holiday.

I am so lucky to get the chance to visit different areas of this country with family as my tour guides. I had such a fun, historic and relaxing weekend in Yorkshire, and am now counting the days down to more family time in the Scottish Hebrides come August.