Ripon and the Yorkshire Dales

Saturday came in cool and sunny - a perfect day for a walk through the Yorkshire Dales.  The difference between the dales (west of the city of York) and the moors (north of the city):  Dales are largely a farming landscape, some with deep valleys carved out by glaciers. Great for walks and hikes.  Moors are highlands covered mostly with heather and an occasional green valley.  They also have popular hiking trails, but can be a bit featureless so are not quite as popular.  We chose the dales for our walk and are happy there were other people along the trail we took, since we got a bit lost and needed their help with directions.

We started with a 75-minute bus ride through several cute English towns with names like Green Hammerton, Whixley, Little Ouseburn and Great Ouseburn, Boroughbridge and Skelton to the city of Ripon. Ripon is on the eastern edge of a large area on the map called the "Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty."  The city itself is small (around 17,000 people) known mostly for its cathedral: the first church was built on the site in 660 by St. Wilfred and it is officially known as the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Wilfred. The current building dates from the 11th century with its famous west front built in 1220. A British architectural historian considered the cathedral's west front the finest in England, so here it is:

There was a wedding getting ready to take place, but we got a peak into the interior before it started:

Personally, I liked the south wall the best, along with the interesting cemetery, with the gravestones laid flat on the ground.

But on to our walk. We had intended to just take a walk through the dales, but the gentleman at the Tourist Information office said we could walk to Fountains Abbey in around 30 minutes. We had thought Fountains Abbey was something we could only get to with a private tour or by car (it's considered the most complete abbey remains in the country), so decided to take the walk there.  The walk was great - just what we had hoped for - but either we had bad directions or it is a much farther walk than 30 minutes (one couple we met along the way said it was 7 miles from town to the Abbey). Long story short, we got to the Abbey grounds too late to actually go in and tour it if we wanted to catch the last bus back to Ripon and then back to York.  The good news is we discovered one can get to Fountains Abbey from York using public transportation.  Plus we had a nice walk, much of it on a path between two hedgerows:

Along the way we saw lots of deer - and pheasants.

We passed St. Mary's Church (on the Abbey grounds), a beautiful little Gothic church from the 1800s.

It had taken us over an hour to get from town to the gate, above. You can see St. Mary's Church in the distance - which we thought was part of the Abbey ruins. Actually, it was about another mile to the Abbey's visitor's entrance.  This is all we could see of the Abbey ruins from there:

We have great memories of the Whitby Abbey, so if we don't get back to Fountains Abbey I won't be upset. We had the nice walk we wanted.  Here's where we waited for the bus back to Ripon:

And just a random Ripon street near the bus station while waiting for the bus back to York:

We got back to York around 7:00 and had our first real meal at "home." (We tend to do more snacking at night - trying out all the different cheeses they have here, with olives and hummus - and smoked salmon for John.)  Although I can't say I really cooked: Marks & Spencer (a department store with a great first floor food court) has a 10 pound ($16) "dinner for 2" that consists of prepared, refrigerated meals that you just need to bake: you get to choose a main course (we had stuffed chicken breasts on a bed of onions), a side (we chose mixed vegetables with pesto sauce instead of one of the many potato dishes), dessert (raspberry crumble) and bottle of wine (French red table wine). It was great!  (Saved the raspberry crumble for Sunday breakfast - it was a nice coffee cake.)  A nice end to our first month here.