Saturday 21 January 2012

A Pleasant Jolly.





A jolly outing today with friend, G, to the small cathedral city of Ripon - a mere twenty five miles away. It is a blowy, stormy, sometimes-wet, sometimes-sunny day and quite cold with it and, as with all cathedrals, the wind really whistles round.

We had a look in a craft shop and then went for a cup of coffee in a lovely little coffee shop, of which there are a lot. I guess that in Winter these shops find it hard to make a living. In Summer, when there are plenty of tourists abouts these cafes will be full - in Winter they are empty.

We came back round by Fountains Abbey - a lovely National Trust property - not to go round it but to call in the rather nice cafe for a bowl of soup. Then we came back by a different route (you never know with my friend G which way you are going to go - she is a wonderful wanderer!).

I took a few photographs of the lovely countryside through the windscreen of her vehicle on the return journey. I share them with you. Interestingly - at Fountains Abbey there is a huge car park and the path from the car park to the abbey cafe is lined with neatly cut hedges. Now that they are bare for Winter we saw that they were full of chaffinches' nests from last year. What opportunists these birds are. The hedge is near to the outside picnic area so they were willing to risk nesting close to where people were constantly walking past, so that they could go to the picnic tables and pick up the crumbs.

Enjoy my photographs of typical English countryside in January - lovely from inside a warm vehicle - rather less so if you are out in it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, glorious Yorkshire! I fell in love with it the first time I ever went there, to Malham Tarn and the love has never diminished. Thank you for the glimpse of it.

angryparsnip said...

Beautiful...

Do the Chaffinches reuse the nests or do they take them apart and rebuild ?

cheers, parsnip

Pondside said...

It's good to have a like-minded friend who loves to ramble. It's always more fun to return home by a different route. I always love the photos of the towns - so different from anything at all over here.

Heather said...

Wonderful photos as usual Pat. The sky may be blue but it does have that cold look! Your trip sounds just the sort of thing I like too and the countryside looks beautiful even on a cold winter day.

Dartford Warbler said...

The wind has been strong and icy here today, so I can imagine it whipping around the streets of Ripon and making you catch your breath.
The Yorkshire countryside is beautiful even on the harshest of winter days. I`m sure the hot soup at Fountains was very welcome!

George said...

I can certainly understand why you had a jolly outing today, Pat. How could it be otherwise in such a magnificent region of the world?

rkbsnana said...

That's cute..rather less lovely outside the car. You live in a beautiful place

Von said...

You stirred my Yorkshire genes!!Lovely time of year.

Hancey said...

Disease is caused when the normal growth of the lawn Turf Gold Coast is disrupted because of its interactions with pathogens like fungus. The pathogen comes from the environment and hinders the growth of turf grass. Diseases generally occur where the environment is floods with pathogens. Moreover the plants which are more stressed are prone to disease as compared to unstressed plants.