Stay in Touch
Get sneak previews of special offers & upcoming events delivered to your inbox.
-
Blogs & Forums
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for
Tuesday - July 3 - Farm Visit - Yorkshire Dales National Park - Lake District
(have no idea why there is a spoiler mark above; do not know how to remove it. ) 
Today was a travel day, taking me out of wonderful York and thru the remote villages and rolling hills of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park. The landscape has been immortalized by the writings of James Herriot in books, such as All Creatures Great and Small and It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet. Both of these works led to the creation of one of Britain's longest-running TV series, whose 90 episodes portray the challenges facing rural communities, and is still relevant today.
At a local working dairy farm today, anyone from America walking around the land to see how the cows were milked were instructed to put on supplied booties, plastic covers for your shoes. I thought it was nice of them to supply the booties, because it was for you to be able to tell the Custom people at the airport that your shoes were not on farmland. This they do only for Americans, I think. Maybe there are other countries that are as strict with their custom practices, but was glad I was able to put those on.
Upon leaving the place, you walked into a padded area of disinfectant, then took off the booties and again walked onto a disinfectant pad with your shoes touching the disinfectant this time, double ensuring that you did not take anything of the farm with you.
The landowner had his very young border collie show how to herd the sheep. He is not 100% good at it though. Ha! The owner says he has about 2-3 more months of training. He was more interested in herding the donkey and the goat than the sheep!
A lunch was provided up in a hayloft and was quite good. Sitting on bales of hay, the lunch was cheese, ham, a roll, salad, etc. It was actually a very nice atmosphere, albeit, there was the smell of the cows!
From there I went to the Lake District, another national park, famed for its mountain scenery and picturesque lakes. Such a beautiful and awesome place to visit.
It did not take long to realize why it was this scenery that so moved Wordsworth and Keats, inspiring the British Romantic Movement of the 19th century and the Victorian writer of children's stories, Beatrix Potter, who made up stories about her animals. I passed thru Grasmere, which is where Wordsworth is buried.
Another place driven by today was Harrogate, which is a small spa resort town. It is here that Agatha Christie disappeared to, getting away for a while from a marriage that was not good. I believe it was in December 1926, but not sure. I have every single book she wrote and love going thru them again from time to time, and was curious to know about her disappearance, and to finally see where she went. She left her home in Surrey, I believe, driving her car to the train station, and that was where she was last seen. What she did, though, was to come to Harrogate and check into the Swan Hotel, just to get away and think things thru. Funny thing is that she signed in as Teresa Neil, who was her husband's mistress. When she was found out, she returned home to her husband. Who knows how long she might have stayed there if someone had not spotted her.
An incident that happened in the area of the Yorkshire Dales National Park in 2007 was interesting to me. A father and son went walking out in the fields with their metal detectors, like many other times. But this time they found 617 Viking coins and jewelry. They were allowed to sell everything and split the profits with the landowner. The total was 1 million, 82 thousand pounds! It is said that the sale of metal detectors went up after that!
I drove by the town of Skipton. If that does not ring a bell, then maybe the movie The Calendar Girls will. It was filmed here locally and was based upon a true story of the ladies club in Skipton. It was about the club trying to raise money for, I think, cancer. They had raised money in the past, but they wanted to do more. One of them came up with the idea of putting out a calendar of them naked, with fruit, gardening implements, etc., covering their more private parts. Each one would represent a different month. It was a hilarious movie! I found out that recently they were to meet to celebrate some important date of the club and Miss April, Miss May, and Miss September were not invited because they had a "falling out" with the rest of the members. Ha!
Little tidbits of information I learned today:
1. The Yorkshire men are not generous with their money. They are very careful with their "brass."
2. The British are 50/50 on the reason for the divorce between Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Some blame him (he talks to his plants too much, they say), and others say that she should have known, even at the age of 19, what kind of life she could expect (little support, rigid rules, etc.), since her grandmother was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen, her brother-in-law also worked directly for the Queen, and she had been raised among the gentry and Royal society. But everyone still adores her and are glad to see that the Queen is making great efforts to give Kate more support and leeway.
3. People do see that Charles is making up in many ways for how badly people were feeling toward the Royals, and the biggest way is that he has cut the Civil List, which used to pay for all the relatives' living expenses. So there were cousins, uncles and aunts, etc., who had a free house to live in and expenses. Now, not even Princess Anne, Prince Edward, or Prince Andrew and their families are covered with their expenses; only people getting living expenses are Charles and his descendants, the Queen and her husband.
4. There is a coffee shop in Settle called The Naked Man. The reason it is called that is because it used to be a morgue and the naked man was the man on the slab waiting for his funeral.
5. Gypsies are called travelers in England (also Ireland). They stop wherever they want to, on anyone's land, and there is not much the landowner can do about it. They are not very clean, they leave a lot of trash, and if the landowner complains about it, the local police are not much help, and they usually take 2-3 days to act upon a complaint. The travelers usually leave after a few days. The travelers are mostly from Romanian descent, but there are some Irish ones too.
6. Passed thru Ingleton, which is known for spelunking, or pot holing, as it is called locally. I think it would be fun to go pot holing, don't you?
7. The three Bronte sisters lived in the Yorkshire Dales area. I saw the school they attended. Two of them, Charlotte and Emily, are buried locally. Ann was taken to another town because she had great respiratory problems, died, and was buried in that town (do not recall what the name of it is).
8. Prime Minister Tony Blair - not well liked by the British, from what I can tell. They feel he was a puppet of President Bush and got them into wars they should not have been in.
9. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher - they are not fond of her either, except for the strong stance she took on the Falklands situation. It is commonly agreed that if there had been any other prime minister at the time, the Falklands situation would still be going on. And they agree that because of the final outcome of the Falklands, that it cinched the re-election of her as prime minister soon thereafter.
10. The Lake District receives the most rain in England, up to five feet has been recorded. It was a beautiful, sunny day when I was there. It is considered a holiday destination, and it is not hard to understand why. Gorgeous!
11. England (maybe all of Britain, no sure) has road signs in miles, not kilometers. I would have thought it would be kilometers. Just surprised me to see everything identified as to how many miles until a town would be reached.
Tonight I stay at the Tebay Hotel out in the middle of nowhere. I think it is in Cumbria, but not sure. There are hundreds of acres around me, all beautifully green and lush. There are sheep roaming around the hotel, and you can hear no traffic from cars, buses, trains, or trucks! Should be a very restful night.
It is my last night in England, as tomorrow I head for Scotland. Really looking forward to visiting Scotland.
*You're signing up to receive QVC promotional email.
Manage Your Account
Find recent orders, do a return or exchange, create a Wish List & more.
Get More with QCard®
Enjoy Your QCard Easy Pay Perk!
Customer Service
Work with Us
Stay Connected
Download Our QVC Apps
This is Shopping Brought to Life.
Privacy StatementGeneral Terms of Use
QVC is not responsible for the availability, content, security, policies, or practices of the above referenced third-party linked sites nor liable for statements, claims, opinions, or representations contained therein. QVC's Privacy Statement does not apply to these third-party web sites.
© 1995-2024 QVC, Inc. All rights reserved. | QVC, Q and the Q logo are registered service marks of ER Marks, Inc. 888-345-5788