Thursday, the rain on the moors stays mainly on the road

Thursday we spent a lot of time driving around the North York Moors National Park. Beth took one of my favourite pictures of this cross on a hilltop. We were driving through Pickering when we noticed a steam train in the station. We just had to stop and have a look at it. It was wonderful to see but we thought there was no point in taking a ride on it in the pouring rain. One of the most interesting things we saw was the White Horse of Kilburn (ok, interesting to us!), a chalk drawing on a hillside in Kilburn. You could see it for miles around. It was created by a teacher and his students in 1857. One of the other little towns we passed through was Coxwold . It's claim to fame is Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. I had never heard of this book but Beth had. I will have to read it. It is suppose to be hilarious and a classic of English literature.

We stopped for lunch in Hutton Le Hole, a picture postcard type of village. There is just something about the yellowish mellow stone that draws your attention. It is lovely. We sat down in the pub to lunch just as a brigade of senior citizens came in to have lunch also. There must have been 50 of them. They were just too much, trying to get themselves organized – who would sit with whom, Zimmer frames, complaining about the prices and deciding whether to have a drink (they did!). We ate in a hurry and got out! – It was here that Beth found a clock. We were messing about in a garden store (well, I think it was a garden store – maybe it was just a tourist trap!) when she spotted another railway clock. If you have been to my house you already know we have one that says Paddington and another from Victoria Stations. I really love them. Beth bought a new one that says Kensington on it as a present for her father and me. In the Wynchwood Gallery, I also bought a watercolor by Daisy Barnes . It is a charming little picture of the moors with red poppies in the foreground. We had been seeing enormous red poppies on the side of the roads all week. They were some of the largest poppies I have ever seen in my life. I don’t think any painting will ever capture the real beauty of the moors, the colour and light is too hard to get down but this one will make a nice reminder of our trip.

We ended the day back at the pub in Danby playing Trivial pursuit. There was absolutely no cell phone coverage in Danby and you felt like you were out of touch with the world. I was excited that Carrie was joining us on Friday for the weekend. She had taken her citizenship test earlier in the week (and passed! Yeah!) and couldn’t join us sooner. She was traveling up to Danby by train and I was a little worried about the connections. If she missed us, there would be no way to contact us!