After a quiet day including a walk to a nearby riverside pub, we spent our last full day visiting the RHS site at Harlow Carr, just outside Harrogate. The location has an incredible variety of plant life on display: formal flower beds; rock gardens; fields of wild flowers; woodlands and a big vegetable, fruit and herb section. After (almost) resisting the temptations of the plant & gift shop we drove the short distance to a very pleasant CL on a nearby farm (Rudding House Farm)and awoke the following morning to the sound of various farmyard animals and prepared for the drive home.

A day trip out to one of the National Trust’s crown jewels. This World Heritage site is really two attractions in one: the huge ruins of Fountains Abbey, parts of which date back 800 years, and the impressive Studley Royal Water Gardens full of ornamental ponds, assorted follies, imitation Roman temples and statues. A river and two paths connect the sites and there are spectacular views from almost every vantage point.

We moved campsite today heading east towards Ripon. We were looking for somewhere interesting to stop for lunch and spotted a National Trust location we had never heard of called Brimham Rocks. We would now certainly recommend it to anyone passing nearby! The landscape is covered with huge chunks of Millstone Grit which were eroded in the last ice age to form the most weird and wonderful shapes. It looks like something out of Death Valley in the USA, dropped into a slightly more humid Yorkshire. We drove through Ripon and ended up in the campsite at Sleningford Watermill. Our pitch was billed as ‘Hardstanding, Riverside’ and to Sue’s delight that’s exactly what we got! Even got a bit of sunshine as well.

Drove the van down to Skipton for the day. Found a car park in the centre of the town where motorhome can stay overnight for £5 – noted for potential future use. The town bills itself as the gateway to the dales and was certainly very attractive with the Leeds-Liverpool canal running through it’s centre and plenty of cafes and bars overlooking the waterway. There was even a ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest in the High Street. The town is dominated by Skipton Castle – a massive fortress dating back 900 years. One half of the building is open to the public and the other half, unusually, was bought by a private family who spent 3 generations restoring it to use as their own residence – quite an impressive address! Behind the castle a path leads along the river to Skipton Castle Woods, a wonderful oasis of peace and quiet now run by the Woodland Trust.

Today we walked from the campsite to Grassington via the Linton Falls, yet another very impressive set of falls. The town itself is very pretty and clearly very popular – the tourists are obviously starting to emerge from lockdown. We had a very pleasant lunch sitting outside a small cafe, a touch of normally returning at last. On the return walk we spotted a house with a model railway in the front garden – every home should have one!

Left this morning driving south from Hawes eventually passing the well known Ribblehead Viaduct, used by trains on the Settle to Carlisle route. We turned left on the A65 stopping off in Skipton to top up on food and drink before heading north to a new site near Grassington for 3 nights – the Wharfdale CMC campsite. Dry weather all morning for the drive but our plans for a walk this afternoon were scuppered by – guess what? – more rain!

After a night of heavy rain we should have known better than to try a walk described as ‘strenuous’ involving climbs up and down steep (& wet) steps on the river bank. At times there was a sheer drop into the beck on one side of the path with lots of tree routes trying to trip you up. Why are so many of the stiles seemingly designed for extremely thin people? Worth for the view of the falls though. Passed through the village of Gayle enroute – another location with an impressive river running through the centre.

Took the van out today to Aysgarth Falls, 15 mins drive east of the campsite. There is a excellent walk along the River Ure that connects the Lower, Middle and Upper Falls with some fantastic views along the way.

A late start because of rain but after lunch we walked across the fields, following a small section of the Pennine Way to Hardraw. If you walk through the pub car park and pay the entrance fee you can follow the trail which ends up at Hardraw Force, England’s tallest single drop waterfall – quite spectacular ! On the walk back we encountered approx. 70 sheep being herded down the road, from one field to another. Local traffic was stopped for a while but everyone seemed to find it very entertaining!

Our first post lockdown trip was to the CMC site at Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales taking a roundabout route – dropping Rhys off in Hull. The site is a short walk north of the town which has a river running right through the centre. We had a quick walk around the town and were back in time time to see the sun setting over the hills (and a field of sheep opposite the site entrance).