Harrogate District

It’s hard to avoid the whole James Herriot / All Creatures Great and Small connections when you’re deep in the Yorkshire Dales.
But we weren’t really trying to avoid them - in fact we sought them out. We are unashamedly fans of the books as well as the 2 series that arose from those volumes as they portrayed a rural life so different to ours in Australia. Beautiful, rugged, harsh, stark, majestic - the list of adjectives goes on. What we discovered today was all of this and more.

But first things first.

Indeed our destination today was Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales, but as we were so close to Liverpool after departing Chester, Loss insisted 😉 we take a slight detour to capture a couple of points of interest from the most famous of all Liverpudlians - The Beatles. Two songs were released by the band in February 1967 - Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields and both of these physical landmarks were on the ‘easy’ side of Liverpool so we sought them out.

First stop was ‘Penny Lane’ and we snapped the obligatory photos of some of the landmarks from their childhood - the Barber, The Bank, The shelter behind the roundabout etc. We even took some video with the song playing quite loudly. No one batted an eyelid as I suspect it is an everyday occurrence for the locals.
About 10 minutes away is ‘Strawberry Field’ which was also a childhood haunt, particularly of John. It was a children’s home ‘back in the day’ with large gardens and grounds. It is now a Salvation Army centre and they do a strong trade in Beatles memorabilia.

Although Loss was keen to seek out other places such as their childhood homes etc, I dragged her away from her 60’s nostalgia and we headed for the Yorkshire Dales. The scenery changed quite abruptly after we left Liverpool suburbia behind us and before long we were marvelling at the beauty of the Dales as they started to reveal themselves.

On the way to Grassington, we stopped at Broughton House (Mr’s Pumphrey’s residence) and then arrived in the absolutely gorgeous town of Grassington at midday. It was too early to check in at our accommodation (The Devonshire Hotel / Drovers Arms) so after exploring the town and appreciating its unquestionable beauty we went off for a longish drive through the Dales. The roads are impossibly narrow and winding and progress is slow - but that is a bonus because around each bend lies a new vista of beautiful rolling hills, little streams, bridges, stone fences and buildings dotting the landscape creating an ‘otherworldly’ sensation.
We ended up passing through Askrigg (the Drovers’ Arms and Skeldale house of the original series) and Yockenthwaite (the Alderson’s farm).
We’ve just returned to Grassington, checked in to ‘The Drover’s Arms’ and been assigned room 7 - the Tricki Woo room :)
We’re just hoping that as a result we don’t end up with Tricki’s unfortunate, recurrent affliction😳Read more