Had a lovely dinner and more drinks then off to bed. Up in the morning and sorted to head to Ripon and Fountain Abbey. It was still grey and cloudy but mostly dry and we had a walk around Thirsk before heading out. Saw the market set up and had a wander.<\/p>\n
Off toward Ripon and had a lovely drive. Got there as it opened so perfect timing – we about the second couple in! Walked down to the abbey, with Joe taking photos as we went. We spent a good two hours just around the abbey, didn’t get to see the gardens or the church or the rest of the site! So another place to return someday.<\/p>\n
The ruins are very impressive, especially as there are ravens all over. Toward the end of our visit the school groups were coming in so we had three groups of little ‘monks’ walking around. Apparently they dress them up in robes for the tour!<\/p>\n
At about noon we headed out to get to Cheltenham. We drove from Ripon to Pateley Bridge in the dales. We took the B roads through the dales and Grassington to Skipton and the A59 down to Preston and the M6. Then it was just M6 to M5 to Cheltenham with a quick stop at the services just south of Birmingham for a short break.<\/p>\n
Now settled in, had a look through the photos and Joe is getting camera equipment ready for the photo day at Slimbridge tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Had a lovely dinner and more drinks then off to bed. Up in the morning and sorted to head to Ripon and Fountain Abbey. It was still grey and cloudy but mostly dry and we had a walk around Thirsk before heading out. Saw the market set up and had a wander. Off toward Ripon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-6a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/13\/still-in-yorkshire\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":0},"title":"Still in Yorkshire","date":"Sunday, 13 June 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So woke up and had breakfast. The Met Office had said that the day would be cloudy but dry (one of the reasons we came up here) so of course it was pouring with rain. Ho hum. So our idea of leaving the car at the hotel and walking around\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/06\/to-see-orchid\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":1},"title":"To see orchids","date":"Sunday, 6 June 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We have been trying to get out to Cheshunt, to see the orchids in the Lee Valley Park. The are several trails and boardwalks . We took the train to Cheshunt and walked to where we thought the start of the walk was - we got it wrong :). Where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dyslexic Discourse"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":402,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/12\/york-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":2},"title":"York","date":"Thursday, 12 August 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A leisurely\u00a0 breakfast, we then decided to stroll to the Minister. Went to the one of the sections of the city, up a temporary stair to the top of the wall and walked along the back of the Treasury House and to the Bootham Bar and down off the wall.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2725,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/15\/shells\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":3},"title":"Shells","date":"Thursday, 15 September 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"So up and out to the Bauhaus Archiv - largest collection of Bauhaus material. It was a straight walk through the Teirgarten, so we walked. Lovely day in the garden, went through the 'English garden' which wasn't so very English but still nice. In the morning there are water sprayers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4087,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/03\/22\/roman-around\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":4},"title":"Roman around","date":"Friday, 22 March 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"That's Joe's title. Not mine.\u00a0 We walked today. Well, today isn't over, but we'll be doing more walking this evening. We started out on the metro though to the Vatican - we did that today because Monday we'll be doing it again at stupid o'clock. Found the nearest metro station\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1005,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/14\/more-barcelona\/","url_meta":{"origin":382,"position":5},"title":"More Barcelona","date":"Saturday, 14 June 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Slept in a bit after lots of wine with paella for dinner. Out of the hotel to find food - decided to take the metro today and head straight to Palau Guell, Gaudi's early building. So off the metro and Joe spotted the Mercat de la Boqueria - large colourful,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":384,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}