Day 2 - Yorkshire, My Future Home

Daddy dragged us out of bed bright and early (5:30 AM) for a light breakfast of tea and scones. Half asleep, we ate and then walked out to the van to wait for Mommy and Daddy to check out of the TLQ.

The weather here has been quite a shock. Thankfully I packed long pants and long-sleeved shirts. On the day before we left Maryland thermometers topped off at 100 degrees; in England today we had a high of 72. It is cloudy and drizzly – Kenny, in his usual charming way, calls it “Jane Austen rain”. Though, he is quick to point out, in all mushy love scenes in Jane Austen movies a downpour happens to dump itself on the heroine.

First on our list for today was Thirsk, an extremely charming little town in the Yorkshire Dales. In fact, its claim to fame has everything to do with its charm, so well described by its famous son James Herriot. For those who have read the books, the town looks much as it must have when he wrote. The marketplace, cobblestone streets, “Black Bull” Tavern, and host of friendly though elderly residents transport one to another era entirely.

I am constantly awed by the simplicity of these people living in the Dales. They seem to live quite happily apart from the rest of their country, London especially, and would rather not be bothered. But they love it when others appreciate what they have. Never in my life have I met such a charming people.

Other than its streets and residents, Thirsk’s main attraction is the World of James Herriot, which consists of his house as well as a museum to veterinary medicine. The house is set up very much like it would have been when he lived and worked in the 1940s (though I think that much of the clutter was for the benefit of the tourists). But somehow the time period portrayed inside the house was not alien to the outside – the town is caught in some kind of time trap.

A little on James Herriot: His name, in fact, was not James Herriot but rather James Alfred Wight. Also, one might be led to believe that “Alf’ was born in England. This is wrong – he was born in Sunderland in Scotland and was raised in Glasgow. It was only after Alf had graduated from veterinary school in England and had moved back to Sunderland to look for a job that he found a position had opened up in Thirsk. Since veterinary jobs were few and far between, he packed up his things and moved to the Yorkshire Dales.

One thing that I did not realize about James Herriot was that he never stopped practicing veterinary medicine. As his charming books rocketed him to international fame, he remained grounded. When asked what he would do with his million pounds gleaned from royalties on his books and their film adaptations, he answered “Do? I am going to go on doing what I always have - being a vet. I am, and always have been, a vet first and a writer second.”

The museum was interesting as well, but not as much as the house itself. Devoted to the history of veterinary medicine, the museum contained a myriad collection of frightening instruments (a box to contain a cat while it was castrated?) and “interactive” exhibits. We all enjoyed the one where we got to birth a calf. ;-)

When we finished at the gift shop we took a short drive to Northallerton for lunch at Betty’s Tea Room. Because Betty’s is famous worldwide, one of Mommy’s wishes was to have tea there. There was a very long queue when we arrived so Kenny, Celeste and I went to browse the market while the rest of the family stood to wait for a seat.

The lunch was very good and extremely filling – I had lemon and seasoned chicken salad and probably drank six cups of tea. Kenny flirted with the waitress (named Rachel – he said she had lovely eyes) and made the poor girl blush awfully. I don’t think I will ever get used to my brother flirting with girls. Afterwards we piled back into the car and started the rather long trek through the Yorkshire Dales to the Forbidden Corner. On the way we passed Middleham Castle, a highlight of our 2003 visit to the Mother Country.

One would think that we came to England specifically for the Forbidden Corner, considering how excited Elizabeth was to see it. The Forbidden Corner is what is called a “folly” and was built by one man on his huge estate to entertain his grandchildren many years ago. A labyrinth of elaborate mazes, caves, streams, and gardens, it takes roughly three hours to find the way through. No expense was spared in the building of the folly: the caves, castles, and statues are all made of stone. But one shouldn’t be surprised to see arms sticking out of walls or perhaps (excuse me) a little statue of a mischievous boy that pees on you as you pass by.

Daddy had never been there before so we spent a long time following him around and enjoying his reactions to everything. I remember coming two years ago and being absolutely terrified because I was so claustrophobic. It is a very upsetting feeling to know that you can’t get out of somewhere even if you wanted to. As to pass through the various parts of the folly, the doors close and lock behind you. There is no way out except to find the correct way.

After finishing the folly the girls and I went to the bathrooms. Characteristic of the Forbidden Corner, even the bathrooms were not spared some form of trickery. The entrance was wooden, reminiscent of traditional outhouses. We opened the door and there in front of us were two holes in a bench in a wooden shed, and a sign hung over them that read “This privy occupies two, but if there is only one in here, leave the door unlocked.” There were newspapers stuck on nails on the walls for our enjoyment. Celeste said “You have got to be kidding me”, expressing all our thoughts. We did a search and finally found a hidden door into the real bathroom, an elegant one in pink marble with silver fixtures. Very funny – Kenny said that they didn’t play such a joke on the boys, of course.

We left the Forbidden Corner and started heading back through the Dales on their famous one-lane two way roads. Daddy has a habit of driving very quickly, so I got used to the sight of white knuckles on those roads. Eventually I fell asleep and continued to sleep until we stopped at Doncaster for dinner.

Unfortunately not everything during a day can go well; the day ended on a sour note here at the Lakeside Beefeater, a Family Restaurant. The portions were very small and the service extremely slow.

Dinner was over by 10PM, and we continued our drive to Mrs. Sander’s farm where we would be renting the Garden House. We dragged our things into our new house and crashed for the night. Tomorrow I will try to describe the house a bit – it is very charming and feels like home as we spent four weeks in it in 2003.