I mentioned yesterday that we were heading to Wensleydale today for lunch at a cute little place called The Wensleydale Heifer. Wensleydale is famous because of the Aardman Studios cartoons of two characters named Wallace and Gromit. People ask me, “Who are Wallace and Gromit?” These two are Wallace and Gromit. They live in Wensleydale, they eat Wensleydale cheese (Wensleydale is famous for cheese) and we love them dearly. They are pretty much the only animation outside of Pixar that I have watched in the last 50 years. And I have to admit that Kathleen turned me on to them. I had really never heard of these two before I met her.

So we were off today to have lunch at a wonderful restaurant/hotel called the Wensleydale Heifer. We stayed there overnight and had dinner with Paul and Gail when we last visited in 2019. Recently, Paul and Gail had been there to celebrate Gail’s birthday and found out they were now having a big lunch on Sunday (which I was just told is very common in England). So they asked us if we wanted to go up for lunch on the Sunday we were here (today). So, about 11:00 am, we were off to Wensleydale. On the way, we stopped for a walk around a very typical small town—Leyburn. While we were there, I got some photos of the village (only four that I liked enough to display), and I hope you like them. It took a bit of Photoshop work this time. Most of these beautiful, historic buildings were plastered with signs and banners. I had to remove all that to show the the beauty of the buildings themselves. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

After our quick tour of Leyburn we were off to the Heifer for lunch. And what a lunch! I did it again, though. I was so hungry and so much in a hurry to try the unbelievable food that I forgot to take a photo of the meal until dessert. Shame on me. Suffice it to say that the meal was amazing. Here’s the menu if you are interested.

We all had the traditional roast beef Sunday lunch with Yorkshire pudding, roasties and so many other wonderful things. You can see them all on the menu. But here’s what dessert looked like. It’s a Hazelnut Terrine, Honeycomb Cheesecake with Honeycomb Ice Cream. Delicious.

As long as we are showing photos, I thought maybe you would like to see all of us together. If you notice a balloon at the table, Paul’s birthday was last Thursday, so we were celebrating belatedly. We had the best three days with them, and they took such good care of us. We can’t wait to see them again. We FaceTime regularly, but it isn’t the same as getting together.

And that’s about it for yesterday. We are off to Glasgow this morning by train for a two-day visit and then off to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. See you then.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.  —Ralph Waldo Emerson