The road to nowhere (UK trip 6/9)

Hawes, Friday 30 June 2006
Every vacation seems to have at least one day that does not go to plan.

Today was that day.

Our plan was to drive out to Pickering Castle, then hit Helmsley Castle and Rievaulx Abbey on the way back. Unfortunately, we never made it due to some confusion at the petrol station.Today's lesson: petrol + diesel engine = bad We broke down getting off the A1 toward Thirsk, and after waiting over an hour, we got towed to Harrogate, the opposite direction from our intended destination. It took all afternoon to get back our vehicle, so we had lunch at a very nice seafood restaurant called Graveleys. If you like seafood and you're in Harrogate, you HAVE go to Graveleys. It was a recommendation from the man at the auto repair shop, and it was absolutely the best. After lunch, we wandered shops for a bit. We found A Rough Guide to Florida, which describes our hometown as "pretty but dull". We don't call it 'Melboring' for nothing!

We took the A6108 back toward the A684 and Hawes. We passed Jervaulx Abbey along the way, so we stopped, partly to do some actual sightseeing, and partly so the day was not completely without merit.
Jervaulx was a Cistercian abbey that fared rather worse than most in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Very little of it is now standing, but the ruins that remain give an idea of the size of the abbey. Apparently the abbot ticked off Henry VIII enough that the entire monastery (building and inhabitants) was terminated with extreme prejudice. Quite a shame, really - it must once have been quite lovely. [Ed: I also got a slight bit of a creepy feeling in the cloister area, and I'm not normally sensitive to such things. M has said he felt something similar when he visited it in the past. Wonder if there's something to that...]

Tomorrow we check out of Hawes and head for London. I will hate having to leave Yorkshire.