So it turns out that having two holidays in quick succession is fun, but it takes a lot of catching up. Not long after France, we went to Whitby. This post is part of the catching up, along with the hectic days at work and busy weekends that have kept me away from blogging.

It was worth it.

We’ve done a lot of Yorkshire in the last few years, but it’s full decades since I’d been to Whitby. Since then it’s always been somewhere on the telly without much significance. What a shame. The town may be past its best (according to some), but its little hilly streets are quite charming and there are some great views to be had from the top of the hills that enclose the bay.

We went up to the Abbey at sunset. It was closed by then, but we wouldn’t have been paying to get in anyhow, as you can see all you want over the wall. At that time of night, the sun is right behind the old ruins and it casts long shadows on the grass and reflects off the water. Evocative.

We had rented what billed itself as an old farm house, in the grounds of a one-time slightly grand manor that even now is being transformed into an exclusive spa-like resort, so I guess that by this time next year it will be all changed. Three floors, loads of bedrooms, and a barn-sized kitchen that happily seated eight of us and could have taken more. We woke up each morning in our clapboard bedroom of whitewashed walls to the sound of the waterfall on the river outside and opened the curtain (it was a small window) to see a tall bank of hydrangeas. It was one of those places you were properly sad to be leaving.

Paths through the grounds led to Whitby in one direction (via a healthy crop of nettles) and Sandsend the other (via a field full of cows), and from there we took clifftop walks around the headland.

The Volkswagen press office had very kindly loaned us another car for the week, and so we spent the rest of our time skimming the moors in our yellow tin banana, standing out against the immature heather as we zipped back and forth between Whitby, York and the Dalby Forest.

That latter spot was a bit of a disappointment. It’s supposed to be a bit like Canada, but in reality it was just a toll road through some woods. Big woods, admittedly, but it felt more like Norfolk than Quebec. I guess the best you can say about it is that in the largely rolling, treeless moors it does make for a bit of variety, but it’s not really worth the £7 fee.

We did York in the rain and sheltered in the enormous National Railway Museum, of which we saw about half. I was sure they used to have an APT there, but it was nowhere in evidence, despite me promising Rich we would see it. Turns out it’s at the neighbouring railway museum in County Durham.

It was a brilliant break that I’ve taken far too long to write about. Shockingly, looking at the next entry down, I only blogged once here in the whole of August. I did do much better over at Blagger, but that’s really not a decent excuse.

Fortunately I’m now back. We’re in a new month, a few deadlines have passed and, rather excitingly, I’m two chapters away from finishing the first draft of my book.

Normal service should be resumed.

Spring lamb (and mother)

The weather thoroughly spoiled us over Easter. Surprising, really, as spring bas been cold and wet so far.

We took the train up to Darlington on Thursday night, straight from work, leaving the cat and chickens in the care of the neighbours, and spent until Tuesday morning in the countryside before commuting back to London for work.

We packed in so much. On the Friday we went to Richmond, where we walked around the cobbled main square and down by the falls, and then motored over to Barnard Castle for tea in the Bowes Museum, which still has one of our family heirlooms in its collection.

I’d seen it from the outside as we drove past it when we stayed in Consett almost two years ago. It looks like a French chateau, externally, and that’s impressive enough, but inside it’s a whole other world with a grand staircase and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and that’s only in the entrance hall.

On Saturday we headed into the Dales proper, revisiting many of the places we stopped by when we stayed in Yorkshire last August (how the time flies), clambering over boulders on river beds, jumping over dry stone walls, hunting out the youngest lambs we could find in the fields…

The Dales

But we didn’t spend the whole weekend in the Dales: we visited some old family haunts in Darlington that I haven’t seen in 25 years or more, or not at all as they were my grandparents’ houses, vacated years before I was born.

On the Monday we went to Durham, a city I have always wanted to visit, and although we really only looked around the cathedral (internal photos forbidden) and walked along the river, it was good to be able to say I’ve finally been, and have reason to go back and see the rest.

Durham

It was a sharp contrast to the sights we saw on our journey there. If you go straight from Darlington it’s about 20 miles all told, but instead we drove through the industrial heartland surrounding Middlesborough. Not nice, but very interesting. One of my earliest memories – perhaps my earliest memory of all – is of being taken around the steel works by a family member when I was maybe two and a bit as I was still an only child at the time. At the end, as we left, I was given an absolutely lethal spiral of steel shaving with razor-sharp edges to take home as a souvenir. Needless to say mum put it in her handbag to ‘keep it safe for me’ and it was never seen again.

We did briefly break the car when the gear stick came off in Andrew’s hand, leaving us stranded outside Kettlewell. It looked for a while like we were in for a three hour wait for the AA to come and pick us up, but after retreating to a coffee shop with excellent teacakes it somehow fixed itself, much to our mix of relief (that we’d get home) and disappointment (that there would be no more teacakes for us).

It was a great weekend, and a brilliant start to the season, and for once the trains didn’t spoil any of it. We rode up on the East Coast Main Line, with all the free wifi and regular trolley service that entails, and it ran to almost perfect time.

What a shock it was to get back on our scummy commuter trains yesterday evening for the 30 miles home it takes an hour and a half to cover after work.

Ugh.

Hardraw Force

It’s been a bit quiet around here of late. Things have been busy, but most importantly we had a week away. Volkswagen lent us a car from its press pool and we took it to Yorkshire with the rest of the family to buzz around the Dales, drinking tea and eating scones in the little hillside villages (below) in between treks up muddy paths to take photos of the waterfalls (above).

We’ve been watching All Creatures Great and Small, so naturally we hunted out the spots that had featured in the show – tiny little Langthwaite, for example, where Seigfried and James could be seen driving over the humpy bridge in the show’s opening credits, and to Askrigg, which was the setting for the surgery at the fictional Skeldale House, and then to Bolton Castle where James – in the series, not real life – proposed to Helen, and she said yes. One day we drove out of the Dales to the real surgery in Thirsk and visited the World of James Herriot, which turned out to be an excellent little hands-on museum, and where we discovered that he wasn’t really called James Herriot at all, but Alf Wight (he wasn’t allowed to use his real name as it would have counted as advertising).

One day we visited the Black Sheep Brewery and came out smelling of hops and yeast from the vats of beer that put our own brewing efforts to shame.

And eventually, of course, we had to come home and back to day to day life. The cat was very glad to see us.

And day to day life is quite full right now, which is the real reason why the blogging has been so quiet. The proofs of the book, which comes out in either September or November, depending on who you listen to, have just come back from the publisher and so needed reading and correcting while we were away. I’m working my way through those connections now, ready to send back at the end of the week. It’s already sold over 1000 copies in the US on pre-orders, and looking Amazon’s UK listings it’s apparently the 61st best-selling digital photography guide.

The second edition of the Independent Guide to the iPhone has just been published, after several weeks of re-writing and editing. And we’ve all just finished working on the Independent Guide to the Mac.

So it’s been a busy time, which means blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, both here and over at Blagger.

Hopefully, as things settle down, that should all change. Typing fingers crossed.

Low Row