The weather was being remarkably reliable as we set off at 9am for the first part of our drive today. Our destination was Springfield Outlet Village, where we were due to meet Debra & Marc at 11am. They would be driving over from Mablethorpe.
For whatever reason, Google Maps decided to take us out along the Fakenham Road, presumably to avoid some hold-ups on the A47. It seemed a long way round to me, but I have learnt over the years that questioning Google Maps rarely ends well. It knows where it wants to go, even if I don’t.
We arrived with 10 minutes to spare and sat outside Café Nero waiting for them to arrive. With us was a large red suitcase containing the final sort-out of Karen’s Mum’s clothes, which we were passing on to Debra in the hope that she might be able to make use of them.
The case was somewhat bigger than Debra had been expecting, and we had something of a challenge fitting it into their car. There was a moment when I wondered whether we were actually going to have to leave one of the passengers behind to make room for it as I had no plan to take it to Yorkshire and then home again.
After doing that, we walked over to the garden centre for lunch, which somehow lasted three hours as we chatted away and caught up on everything that had happened since we had last seen each other. There was clearly quite a lot to talk about.
Karen insisted upon a quick visit to the M&S outlet and, remarkably, was quite restrained. Just before 3.30pm we were back on the road for the much longer drive up to Thirsk.
The drive would have been considerably shorter if only they would ban lorries from the outside lane on dual carriageways and motorways. I seemed to spend hours waiting for lorries to pass each other inch by painstaking inch, either completely oblivious to the enormous tailback forming behind them or, perhaps, secretly enjoying the chaos they were creating.
Get it sorted, Mr Burnham.
We arrived at our now familiar room at The Poplars not long after 6pm. As Karen put it, it was almost like coming home.
Normally, we then head out to get fish and chips from Thirsk Market Square, but Karen is still ‘off’ that particular choice of food. Instead, we went to Tesco to get some sandwiches and fruit.
After a good night’s sleep, I was up and ready at the laptop just after 9am, as today was the day that Norwich Heritage Open Days tickets became available.
This is always something of a scramble. We had prepared a ‘wish list’ around our availability during the forthcoming ‘wedding week’, which clashed with the Open days and this year our choices involved five different booking websites. Pleasingly, I was able to access two of them and secure tickets before the official opening time of 10am. Quite how that happened I have no idea, but I wasn’t about to question it.
Of the 14 events we wanted, we secured eight. Annoyingly, I am convinced I had booked another three, but the confirmation emails never arrived. So either I had managed to book them or I had simply imagined the whole thing. Time will tell.
While I sat doing this, Karen walked the short distance to the railway station to meet Kevin off the train and walked him back to the Poplars. After a few minutes I was also ready for our day’s adventure.
Today we had decided to head north, up towards the higher moors of Yorkshire and partly into lower Cumbria. Once we were off the main road, the smaller roads almost became tracks for the last 20 miles.
We went higher and higher and came across more and more sheep on the road. Up and down we went, further and further off the beaten track and into the vast wilderness in the middle of nowhere.
It was the sort of place where you start wondering whether we would ever see civilisation again.
The views, though, were a sight to behold.
Eventually, we came to the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in Britain. Despite it being before noon, it was already busy. The place has almost become a bit of a cult, as every year its landlords, and quite often many of its customers, get snowed in for days at a time.
The most memorable occasion was a few years back when an Oasis tribute band were also snowed in for a week and put on a gig each night for all of the customers who were similarly stuck.
I’m not sure whether that made their predicament better or worse.
The pub itself has no airs or graces. There are large flagstones on the floor and deep walls, and at one point there seemed to be as many dogs as customers. It was well run, though, and clearly well cared for.
There are also not many pubs that have quite such a large amount of their own merchandise for sale. You could leave having bought a mug, a T-shirt, a tea towel and enough other souvenirs to convince everyone at home that you had actually spent the week there.
We ordered lunch, which turned out to be acceptable. Not memorable, perhaps, but perfectly adequate for hungry travellers.
After this we headed even further off the beaten track to Ravenseat. This is the farm run by the ‘Owen family’, who are the subject of many TV series featuring their many children. There have now been numerous spin-off series as well.
We were interested in seeing the farm, especially as we knew they were now offering ‘cream teas’.
As in most things on television, the farmhouse seemed smaller in real life. The cream teas were served from a ‘pop-up’ van by two of their enterprising children. The scones were fresh out of the oven and got the thumbs up from Karen and Kevin.
It was all rather pleasant, sitting at the picnic table and gazing over the animals and buildings that we were familiar with from our occasional Sunday teatime viewing of their programmes.
There is something rather strange about sitting somewhere you have seen so many times on television and suddenly realising that the sheep wandering past are, quite possibly, more famous than you are.
We drove to Kirby Stephen, which seemed a rather pleasant Cumbrian village. We drove back the short distance to the Eden Viaducts where we had a walk along the old railway line over the Podgill viaduct. It was a lovely walk in the surprisingly good weather. However, the viaduct really needs to be viewed from below rather than above but there was no way of getting down below.
Finally we headed back to Thirsk via Reeth, which again seemed a pretty little place.
We parked very close to the house filmed as ‘Skeldale House’ in the first All Creatures Great and Small film.
Finally, we arrived back in Thirsk, where we had a quick drink in the Wetherspoons in the market square before taking Kevin back to the station to catch his train back to York.
As we had eaten at lunchtime, we just popped into the local Lidl to get some sandwiches to eat back in our room. We munched these down before watching another episode of The Undeclared War, which we are both really enjoying.
Then, in those famous words, it was time for bed.
