Thermal

For the second week of our holiday, we drove the 300 miles from Oban to the excellent Vale of Pickering campsite in Yorkshire. Everything a campsite should be, upon seeing the playground, Patrick remarked that ‘it was just like Heaven’….

We weren’t far from Scarborough which we visited on the Monday, and the first thing we did was give the boys their first ever donkey ride. They absolutely loved it, and Tom was a natural rider – it was so funny to see them casually chatting to each other as they rode, like they’d been doing it forever.

Just outside Scarborough in the village of Rudston is the 25 feet high Monolith, which is some 4000 years old, and quite an eyeful as you can see. It’s amazing that they never tore it down while building the church, as happened to so many other ancient sites. Perhaps this one was just too big, even for the zealots.

Just to prove that the sun did shine occasionally, this shot is from Fountains Abbey, some 850 years old, although long ruined and in a quite beautiful setting. It’s a lovely place to spend a few hours, despite being buzzed at 50 feet by the RAF, and then chased back to the car park by a thunder storm.

The boys week was made almost complete with a ride from Pickering to Whitby and back again on a steam train from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway which was absolutely brilliant. The power, heat and smells of these old engines is something to behold up close, and the boys loved it. Pat was most put out however, by the absence of the buffet car……

Finally we made their week complete with a visit to the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington, where they got to sit in a couple of cockpits, run round all the old planes and spend their last few pence in the shop.

All in all, a pretty good fortnight, except that I could do with another break to get over it……

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Life, Photos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.