But it does rain. Please excuse the My Fair Lady reference in the title but hey, I’m in the UK. What did you expect. Yesterday was all about driving around and seeing West Yorkshire. I am going to do most of the describing of what we saw in the photo captions so check there.
It was a better day than I hoped for because other than a couple of hours in the morning we had a pretty nice day of clouds but no rain as you will see from my pics…which yes, I did retouch a little.
The official name of the first place we went was actually Hebden Bridge, a really nice little village with a steam train, a Sunday market and a…wait for it…bridge. We actually saw a lot of bridges and to be honest, we just weren’t sure which one was the actual Hebden Bridge but they have a lot of nice ones. Especially over the canal that winds it way through village. We walked around a bit and then had a nice lunch in Hebden Bridge before driving on to tour Haworth.
Haworth’s claim to fame is that the Bronte sisters (please forgive the lack of an accent mark on Bronte but I can’t figure how to do that in WordPress) lived there while writing their books. I was the sacrilegious member of the group as I have never read any of their books and/or seen any of the movies made from them. Shame on me. It’s a really quaint little town that’s built on a pretty steep hill. Reminded us of the French Riviera village of Eze (missing another accent mark). We climbed the entire hill and stopped in a bunch of really cool shops, bought some chocolate (after being accosted by their pusher in the street ? giving out free samples). She was very persuasive and we had to take some back to Paul and Gail’s house because there was a distinct lack of sweet treats there…Gail had only made four desserts for dinner ?.
After grabbing the chocolate, we finished our climb and then turned around to head back to the car when we discovered that we were all quite thirsty and needed to stop for a quick cup of tea. I could get used to this stopping for tea thing. It provokes some very nice and convivial conversation that you really can’t have while walking or driving. We have done it two days in a row and it’s a habit I wish we could pick up. This time, we played it smart and didn’t buy anything to go with it so just tea.
After tea it was on to a rolling excursion through Saltaire, a mill town that was really cute and quaint. We were cutting down on the walking today due to my cold, my knee, Kathleen’s back, Kathleen’s leg and now Gail’s foot which she apparently hurt while she and I were off delivering invitations to their friends and relatives all over their neighborhood to their 40th anniversary coming up next month. We kind of looked like the walking wounded coming down that hill. Paul was the only one walking without a limp.
After Saltaire it was back to Leeds to tour the parts of it that can be seen from a car. We drove around and around the city center and are going back to see the parts that are inside the no-cars circle. A very cool city but I would get lost in it, in no time.
Then it was back to Paul & Gail’s where my cold got to me and napped for a an hour or so while Kathleen read and surfed and Paul and Gail made us a marvelous dinner. After that Gail and I spent the better part of an hour trading recipes and getting her Paprika 3 recipe app set up on her phone before it was off to bed for us early risers and a little more TV for our late-to-bed Brit buddies.
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- Arriving in Hebden Bridge
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- Looking for the actual bridges
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- Some cool buildin
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- Maybe this is the bridge
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- These are the official (I think) Hebden Bridge ducks
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- Standing on a bridge taking canal pics
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- Canal boats
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- Haworth looking back down the main street
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- The flag of Yorkshire
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- Pugs for Bob and Holly
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- Love the brilliance of this Union Jack and how well it goes with the door and windows
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- Maybe for my door collection
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- The sun came out!!!
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- The old apothecary
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- Inside the old apothecary
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- The Bronte chapel
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- From the side
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- Bronte’s buried here?
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- Bronte meadows
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- See…the Bronte’s really were here
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- In the Bronte chapel we found this man playing Beatles tunes on the organ
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- Looks like Eze
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- A church in Saltaire
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- And a meadow on the way home
More memories of lovely towns. Sorry that everyone is banged up; but at least your cold isn’t stopping your touring.