Bloggers on the loose in Yorkshire

Oh I had such a wonderful time in Yorkshire!

What a beautiful county! And Autumn was showing it off to perfection. 

The very best bit, of course, was meeting up with Nanacathy!

We even tried a selfie!

 

This was taken with Whitby castle in the background.

 

When I got home, I took a while to ‘land’, recover from all that driving and order my thoughts. My mind was in such a happy spin from everything I did, saw, experienced and photographed, it was hard to put things down in any coherent order. And to be truthful I didn’t really want to – I wanted to stay in that blur of delight for as long as I could!

I do want to share it all with you though – oh yes – so much, and I have been having mini conversations with you all about it.

Where to start – eek! Here I get all excited again and thoughts jump up and down and jostle for attention.  Calm………

Firstly I’ll tell you my itinerary:

I left on Thursday, 1st November and drove to Nuffield Place, where I made a brief stop for lunch and to take photos of ‘Patina’ – here I fell for a guy called W. Morris (of Morris Minor car fame – NOT William Morris of Arts and Crafts fame) and his wife, Elizabeth. Now I am in shock – I was searching for a link so that we could all learn a bit more of this philanthropic pair only to discover that he was in fact a paedophile. I am endlessly saddened by discovering such things. I nearly did not mention this but out of respect for Ann Vaughan, and the Me Too Movement, I felt it only right. (I will amend my previous post about Nuffield Place) Perhaps he made such generous donations to assuage his guilt – many people benefitted hugely from his financial generosity, but many suffered untold pain.

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Then onwards to Coventry and a most fabulous 3 days Mixed Media Collage Workshop tutored by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and Nathalie Kalbach – so much to tell you about that, it will have a future post of its own.

On Monday 5th November, I drove to North Yorkshire where my home for the week was the cute, quaint and cosy Whistle Stop Cottage, which I can highly recommend.

On Tuesday morning Cathy came round for a cuppa! Oh joy!!!! We got on so well as I knew we would, it felt like we had been meeting up for a chat over the kitchen table for years! We had such fun planning our week, Cathy was keen to show me her gorgeous county and had taken into account the things I had mentioned I would like to do and see.

1.The Moors    2. The coast   3. The WW1 Hearts Exhibition  4. Go for a walk  5. Rachel Whitereads’s Nissen Hut.

On Wednesday I met Mr E who has a delightfully wry sense of humour and after a cuppa and a chat, Cathy and I left for Whitby via the most popular bus journey in the UK

It was a bit breezy up there

But the moors were looking spectacular in their autumn garb, and under the clouds they were moody and magnificent. I loved the feeling of looking across that vast expanse – we don’t get views like that in Dorset.

But just like Dorset, around a corner a new atmosphere is created by a river cutting through, creating beautiful valleys. What a drive it is.

Onwards to Whitby and a delicious lunch – more in a future post.

Thursday was spent pootling about in my cosy cottage doing collage – aaaah! joy!

On Friday Cathy picked me up and off we went for a wonderful walk in Dalby Forest and to see the Concrete Nissen Hut (more about both later)

Saturday was a sunny day of wandering around Pickering and more collage

On Sunday, Armistice Day Cathy, Mr E and I all went to the WW1 Hearts Exhibition, in Scarborough, which was very moving and somewhat overwhelming.

Monday was spent finishing off some collages, packing and popping round to say a fond farewell to Cathy and Mr E.

I had such a wonderful time and Cathy was so very generous with her time and Tour Guide expertise – I’m looking forward to telling you more about it all in future posts.

On Tuesday I set off on an epic 5 hour drive across country to stay with a friend in Gloucestershire and then home on Wednesday.

I had such a fabulous time away and returned in a happy glow – I’m looking forward to filling out the details some more in future posts.