North Yorkshire and County Durham

Our entry into County Durham was from Whitby and the little north Yorkshire fishing village of Staithes.

Whitby is probably best known as being where Captain James Cook was apprenticed. There is a replica Endeavour in the harbour visible from the attic window where Cook would have slept. Having read more than one Cook biography it was interesting to see some of his personal effects, letters and voyage equipment. There are also some of the original botany drawings from his voyages.

Staithes is a picturesque, sleepy, little fishing and holiday destination; set deep in a ravine. The road in and out is one car wide and with a gradient of 25% it is best to park at the top and walk down. The stone buildings are a few stories high and closely set together across narrow cobbled roads.

County Durham is northern England in its iconic best: green, productive rolling hills, interspersed with thick hedges of hawthorn.

Durham is a vibrant university town with some great op-shops. It is also a city that has extensive parking around the city centre and almost no vehicles in the town. This adds to the vibrancy. It is best known for its cathedral and castle, both of which give Durham its World Heritage Listing.

The cathedral is different to other cathedrals: it has no frescos or painted ceilings, what it does have is highly ornate and patterned stonework.

Comments

How to take a Van-life gap year

How to take a Van-life gap year You don’t just wake up one day, book tickets, fly to Europe and pick up the first campervan you see. There is a lot of planning and organizing to make it happen. For us, it was a concept that we worked towards over two years and got serious about in the last 6-8 months. Van purchase In researching vans, we learned that we could buy one, but couldn't insure or register it without being either European residents (read: address, bank account and utility bills in the country we wished to buy the van in) or set up a company to own, insure and register the van. Now this is not straight-forward as one needs to be able to navigate the system from the other side of the world and in another language (as vans in the UK / Ireland were considerably more expensive than on the continent). There are a number of companies who provide services in this space. We chose EuroCampingCars, because they are based in France and deal in la...

Highland Games

Arriving in Scotland we saw Highland Games advertised in almost every town that we visited. The problem for us was the events were either the week before or in 4 days time; never at a time convenient for us. Our luck changed on the Scottish Borders town of Peebles; all the stars aligned. Highland Games are when local communities get together and celebrate Scottish culture. All Highland games include: a pipe band competition, highland dancing, and traditional heavy events including caber tossing, hammer throwing, and the crowd favourite of haggis hurling. Pipe bands and dancing are open to all ages and cover a range of abilities Shot putt is the same as the Olympic event but competitors are free to use whatever technique works for them. Some use a standing throw, others use a run up or spinning preparation. Hammer throwing, unlike its Olympic equivalent the hammer has a wooden handle and the athlete does not spin in a circle before throwing it. ...

Ben Nevis – Bagging our first Munro

To a Scottish person, a Munro is a mountain over 1000m in height. To hike up one is to "bag" it. Every Scot can tell you how many Munros they've bagged. Now a 1000m doesn't sound that high but the base of almost all Scottish mountains is close to sea level. Yesterday we bagged our first Munro, Ben Nevis the UKs highest peak. Ben Nevis is walked by 12,000 people a year. In rough figures that is 400 a day. It is not walkable all year. Even without the winter snow, the almost constant cloud cover and accompanying rain mean that there are few great days to climb it. We had checked the forecast and saw a window in the morning and knowing that thousands would attempt the climb we resolved to start early. The alarm went off at 5am. We started at about 5m above sea level and hiked the 1345m to the summit. The hike has three distinct sections: 1. The base to the saddle: the path winds its way through silver birch forest and sheep paddocks w...

Mid-life gap year Tanya and Craig

Search This Blog