Our holiday
Tags: photos, Yorkshire, Flag Fen, archaeology
Date: 15 August 2012 19:44:13
We've been back a couple of weeks, but I realise I haven't really blogged about what we got up to at the end of July.
I was already in Sheffield with work, and HD had a stag do there conveniently, so we started off in Sheffield, and then went on to see friends in York. This was meant to only be for 1 night and then leaving in the morning, but unfortunately Mercutio the Megane needed a bit of repair work, so we ended up in York for a bit longer than originally planned. We did reach our intended destination by the evening though, we spent 3 nights in lovely Whitby.
Whitby harbour:
The following day was HD's birthday, and we spent the day on the North York Moors Steam Railway. The tile shows the route we took, from Whitby to Pickering - it was through such beautiful scenery, it was lovely:
Once we got to Pickering we had lunch and then spent an hour or so looking round the very interesting Beck Isle Museum of Rural Life before heading back to Whitby later:
(near the museum - this just looked like picture postcard England!)
(viaduct just outside Whitby)
The next day we explored St Mary's Church and Whitby Abbey. It is all very atmospheric, and no surprise to anyone that Bram Stoker set part of 'Dracula' in Whitby.
I wonder if Dracula had to walk up the 199 steps though, that might have worn him out a bit and caused him to do a bit less damage! Afterwards we went on a boat trip just out of the harbour on a replica of one of Captain Cook's boats - it was a bit choppy!
After we left Whitby we headed to my parents' place, but on the way we came across Kirkham Priory. As we are Kirkhams this was very exciting - I don't think we could stake much of a claim on it though, so I guess we'll leave it in the capable hands of English Heritage!
At mum and dad's we celebrated my dad's birthday, a month and a half early but they are going away for a few days on the day so we went for a meal while we had the opportunity. We don't see them that often, but it was really lovely and relaxing and they were on form. Dad has bought himself a concertina that he is trying to teach himself, so that will keep him (relatively) quiet and out of mischief for a bit!
The final weekend was a different adventure, we ended up on an archaeological dig at Flag Fen, a Bronze Age site near Peterborough. The dig was arranged through crowd-sourcing, so all the participants (novices like us right through to old hands) paid to participate, and got lots of tuition about archaeology and got to do our little bit for the project. There was also a cracking pub quiz, which our team didn't win but should have :) My photos are in a flickr set. I really enjoyed it, but am not sure my knees will ever quite be the same again!
It was all a really busy but great week. I think though I might want to do something a bit more relaxing next year - we'll see :)