Harrogate

Off to Harlow Carr, a Royal Horticultural Society garden just up the road from Harewood.

Beside being a fantastic garden the place also has a local Bettys. (No apostrophe) Bettys is a local icon based in Harrogate. It was founded by a lost Swiss pastry chef in the 1919. He accidentally got on the train to Yorkshire and the rest is a hundred years of clogging arteries.

It’s a great place with disgraceful pastries and cakes. I will admit that a lot of people appeared to have been taken there by their children as a day out from the Home. Hope Kate didn’t feel like a carer.

All of this before we got inside.

The gardens are very impressive even in 27 degree heat. Every sort of plant you could imagine. Also had a somewhat aged men’s choir serenading the crowd, a giant fly and columns. The great English custom of lets bring a chair and sit about until something happens was much in evidence. What else could you ask.

Charlie bore it all well. (Being pushed around in a pram when she got weary helped a lot).

And this was only the morning.Read more