More Yorkshire: the Dales

As much as we all enjoyed York, it was time to move on to our next destination. But we weren't finished with Yorkshire just yet. The area has several National Parks and since we weren't in a particular hurry, it made sense to take the scenic route west through Yorkshire Dales.

As you can see, we had our first really foggy day, with a little mistiness, but not enough to slow us down. The first stop our "travel agent" found for us was Druid's Temple.

Yes, it looks like the real Stone Age thing, but as you'll see if you follow the link above, it is a folly—one of the constructions loved by those crazy Romantics, who were so into ruins and making nature look like they thought it should look. (It reminded me of the engineered landscape I saw at Blenheim in 2008.) It was actually built in the late 1700's, not the 700's, but was still fun to explore. And, perhaps given the weather (which really was not that bad) we had it to ourselves.

the central area

cool shot looking out of a rather spooky shelter
(but mind the puddle!)

The estate housing the folly has a lot of nice walking trails, some of which are marked by this very attractive, and clever, archway. The sign says "habitat creation in progress," but it's also a very handsome way to enter the trails.

Next up was our lunch spot, a nice cafe in Aysgarth, not far from the waterfalls of the same name. There are actually three falls, and, much to Henry's chagrin, we only visited two of them.

the Upper falls

the Middle falls, really raging

The lower falls was a good bit further on to walk, and most of our party was keen to push on to our final destination. But we spent enough time at these two cataracts to be quite impressed. I happened to hear a local woman, on the way to the middle one, say there was more water going over than she'd ever seen. I guess we hadn't seen much rain, but they must have had a good bit before our visit. Which is, of course, why this is such a "green and pleasant land"—the final line from Blake's poem which also gave us Chariots of Fire.

And we had even more spectacular scenery awaiting at our next landing spot. Here we are getting close to our B&B in lovely Braithwaite, a setting in the Lake District that we highly recommend.