Month: July 2018

We had another great house swap an hour and a half away from Scarborough in Knaresborough which was a new area for us and allowed easy access to York and Harrogate etc. It’s really a lovely area and the house was so comfortable for us all with great views onto the countryside and included rainbows!

We’ve always loved York and had a couple of fun days there. The Jorvik Viking Center is always a good visit as is the Minster and of course shopping and eating in the old city.

Darwin does just fine with buses, trains, boats and crowds. He’s a trooper.

More picnics this time in the Yorkshire Dales (near Scarborough it’s the moors).

And visits to market towns including Thirsk which was the home of James Herriot and still has his museum there. Charlotte and I are also fans of the show the Yorkshire Vet which is a reality show using the old Herriot vet practice (new vets) so we were groupies and visited the clinic.

Then there were Farm Shows and more picnics with friends and of course Darwin.

One of our main goals of summer 2018 was to all spend time in Scarborough visiting the place I was born (my grandmother’s house and where I mostly grew up is the red door) and to show the 3 younger kids (my two and cousin Janet) the town and special places for our family.

This included trips to Durham to see my grandmother’s, great grandparents and great-great grandparents graves and old houses. It might sound rather heavy going but our family spends most of the time laughing and being silly so there was plenty of that going on. We got to meet up with a cousin who brainstormed the family tree and expanded the ancestry site a lot. Later we also met his lovely daughter which was very special too.

England was going through a drought and it hadn’t rained in ages which was good for us as we had unusually dry trips out.

Charlotte was happy to ride quite a few times at my old riding school in Snainton. It was quite special for both of us. She now of course wants to move there and buy her own horse.

We had some amazing picnics at Abbeys and cliff tops all around Yorkshire. I think the theme of the summer has been picnics and family.