Driving through James Harriot's Yorkshire

We were awakened today by something new...the sun shining through our bedroom window. Carpe Diem. A quick breakfast and we were off to drive the Yorkshire countryside. What a beautiful day it was. We had always thought that the prettiest part of England was the Cotswolds but today we would argue that the Yorkshire countryside is equal in its beauty. The expansive views of rape seed fields, the hedge rows on either side of the road and sheep everywhere. Its Lambing season and the fields were full of Ewes with their babies.

We were immersed in "All creatures great and small" country with pheasants running across the road, a scattering ferret, sheep, brown cows, a "sleeping"hedge hog and lovely farm houses. We stopped for lunch at a delightful village pub called the Grape Inn and had Chicken and Mushroom pie with mash potatoes and veggies. It was excellent and even included a ceramic blackbird baked in the pie. I of course washed it down with a pint.

Our destination was the Castle Howard, a palatial home of the local Earl. It was a well run with beautiful formal gardens and a palace full of antiques. Howard castle was the site of the filming of Brideshead Revisited. It seems most of these dynastic families have turned their ancestral homes into tourist attractions as a way to pay the bills and maintain a portion of their lifestyle on the upper floors. 

Howard Castle ticked off our check list, we did what Julie and I love to do most. That of driving country roads and seeing what we can find.  Today's serendipitous drive yielded the lovely village of Helmsley complete with a Norman Castle ruin, an antique fair in the village, and a drive to the ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, destroyed by Henry the Eighth during the English reformation. 

Our last destination was to see the Moors of Yorkshire. Having pretended to have read Wuthering Heights in high school, I could only envision the moors in fog with Heathcliff wandering about. In the sun shine they present themselves as beautifully rolling hills covered with sparse trees, low growing shrubs, grasses and heather....Heathcliffe was not present.

We ended our day with a small calamity that we will not allow to ruin such a delightful drive. In avoiding a speeding car approaching on a tight village road I managed to catch the curb and slice a tire on our rental car. Do you know that no rental cars have spares for liability reasons? They don't want you getting a heart attack and blaming them. In our situation it meant sending a tow truck from a hour away, delivering us and the car back to our apartment and then sending a mobile van who put a new tire on the car. This all occurred on a Friday night from 6:30PM to 11PM and we are ready to be off on another adventure tomorrow. My compliments to Hertz rental car company. Ask me in a month how I feel when I find out its not covered by the insurance and I get a whopping bill. Fortunately this event happened a short walk from a pub so we waited this all out with another pint!. Don't sweat the small stuff is a motto I relearn all too frequently. I'll close tonight with a great pheasant picture, and a fun sign.