UK Trip: Yorkshire Dales. Hardraw Force. Bronte Parsonage. All Creatures Great and Small.

Final day of our 3 day bespoke tour with Mark Sweeney of Live for the Hills. If you're looking for something in the same region (Peak District/Lake District/Yorkshire Dales) or even further afield, look him up. He knows all the nooks and crannies, the best views, and if you're fit you can also go on hikes (not on the docket this time, but a note for the future for me). When I realized we should replan on the fly to have less driving, we had a quick exchange about where makes sense and he suggested Kirby Lonsdale.

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Shoutout to Kirby Lonsdale. Very cute. Nice view, painted by Turner at some point, called "Ruskin's view". Great bakery across the street from our hotel, got a ton of delicious food for 9£ - egg custard, Cornish pasty, currant bar, etc. 

The night prior, I'd mentioned a nearby waterfall trail. Our house looked into it, it was too long to add to our itinerary, but he find us a really stunning waterfall to visit on the way. 

Hardraw force (privately owned fall, biggest vertical drop in the UK):

Lower left was a tree stump. Full with money. It's a thing in the region, people bring coins and a hammer.  You can't see on the sign, but they advertised "outrageously good coffee", which I had (it was pretty good). Literally the only place and time in the UK where the lack of physical money was an issue -- they only took cards above 10£, so we had to pay all together. 

Driving away, ran across Hawes: Wensleydale creamery! I'd read about how Wallace and grommit had really saved the cheese. Stopped in quickly and per chance. They offer tours every two hours, where they demonstrate the production facility and you can see their statue to Wallace and grommit. We were between tour times, so just went to the gift shop. They had a cheese tasting area, tried a Wensleydale-blue (very interesting) and lots of other flavors. Got one with pineapple (ananas) 

Quick pitstop in Kettlewell.

A small part of the trip on "all creatures great and small". Originally a book series written by a Scottish veterinarian who moved to Yorkshire. Our guide's wife is on the production team for the current filming. So we saw the farmhouse used for where the vet lives and the town, Grassington.

Grassington was, as we passed through, i middle of being set up for filming. You could see it from the signs. 

Yorkshire dales; the middle lowe and lower right photos are from all creatures great and small.

[[Haworth (brontës)]]

Another example of "Georgians were so dirty that..." , and here it killed them. Always amazing that the Roman knowledge of sanitation (graveyards NEVER inside city limits, sewage not just dumped on the streets) wasn't recovered even in the 1800s. 

Haworth:

Industrialization lead to a quick population explosion. The town was atop a hill, people would dump their waste out the window and let the rain take care of shunting it onwards. 

Also atop this hill was the Church graveyard, people buried 30 deep, 30-40k buried total. 

Rain passed through all that, and the whole town suffered. Tuberculosis and cholera. Typical life expectancy 30s/40s,  Brontës typical.

Bronte family: Father from..Cornwall?..and moved to Haworth to take over the parsonage. The kids all played by writing stories for each other. 

Brother had an affair with a widow and fell into drugs and despair when it was clear she wouldn't marry him. Died at 31. Their mother had died at 28.

Pictures from the collage:

UL: Main town square. UR : hill everything rolled down. 

Middle row: Bronte church plaque, infamous graveyard.

Bottom row: Inside the house! 

Left: the Bronte children had received little toy soldiers and wrote a whole collection of tiny little books with tiny stories for them. They had a few on display with a magnifying glass. 

Lower Right: the brother's room. He was a bit of an artist. The rest of it was a mess, imagined how he kept it while intoxicated.