Still on the Abbey Road – Yorkshire

Friday, October 08, 2010

Though the early morning fog remained with us throughout the day, it just seemed to add to our sense that we were experiencing typically Yorkshire places and scenes.  We began at nearby Fountains Abbey, a place that has lingered in our memories since our first visit thirty-three years ago.  That day, too, the glorious ruins were shrouded in mist; perhaps that’s mandatory for the full-on impact of the abbey.  It really does seem as if, upon entering the site, visitors step back in time.  What a phenomenal place! 

Back in the real world, or as close as these wanderings take us to the real world, we drove through the Yorkshire Dales National Park.  Here, we were in narrow valleys, in contrast to the high moors we’d visited yesterday.  The national parks here are unlike our own in that they encompass huge areas that include towns, cities, farms, abbeys, castles, schools, shops, etc.  They represent the country’s efforts to protect and make accessible areas of great natural beauty in which people continue to live their lives as they have for centuries.  In the Dales, we drove, often on single track roads, through foggy countryside, frequently having to pull off or back up when we encountered oncoming traffic. 

A particularly striking feature of the countryside today was the mile upon mile of rock walls, built as high as our car roof.  They not only demarcated fields, but lined the roads.  On the one-lane roads, the effect was like driving down long corridors, hoping not to meet any oncoming vehicles, as there was no wiggle room to allow passage.

Don’t know exactly where to put this, but one thing we’ve been struck by in the national parks and other monuments  in Yorkshire has been an ingenious hand washing and drying system in the rest rooms.  Built into niches in the walls are all-in-one units that operate on sensors.  You put your hands in the niche and, in turn, soap squirts out, warm water runs, and warm air blows – very neat, indeed!

After all our wanderings, at the end of the afternoon, when we set out to return to our cottage, we set the GPS and found that we were less than 25 miles from where we’d started at 9:00 this morning!