So, thanks to a very generous offer from Kathryn’s mom, we found ourself with the option of a four-star holiday in a Victorian hotel in Harrogate. Actually, there were a whole bunch of options from many places, but after much debate, Harrogate seemed the most practical and whilst it would almost certainly cost the same as a holiday outside the UK, it would do so in quiet easy to bite off chunks, so we could pretend we could afford it more easily (we were tempted by Paris, or Prague; but the cost of getting there, whilst not horrendous was enough to make both Kathryn and I pause).
The journey, one would think would be simple. And in most regards it was, we trundled off from Bristol, the sonorous wail of the 1300 and the slightly tired Morris Minor diff keeping us company was we trekked up the motorway. But as we neared our destination the weather deteriorated. I muttered a comment about the rain looking quite like sleat, and a then it was snow. We transitioned from flying up the motorway to creeping; the Minor’s tiny wiper blades beating against the mounting snow with increasing futility.
The satisfying whine of the heater continued but it struggled with the sudden and dramatic drop in temperature and the toggle for the heated window was clicked on; the hope being that the snow might slither off the screen. As we soldiered on, amazingly largely heading a line of more modern boxen, the visibility dropped further and further, leaving us to follow the lane marker and pray that nothing was broken down in our lane. Rebecca’s wipers continued their uneven struggle, gently patting the snow into small drifts at the base of the screen. Finally the heated screen did its stuff and some of the snow slithered away. At the point when I drifted into ‘if I see some services we’ll stop’ the snow cleared. Almost as quickly as it arrived it was gone, and we continued our journey northward, finally slipping in to Harrogate under the cover of darkness and under the fancy sheets of the hotel.
Day 2 – Harrogate
When I told people at work that we were going to Harrogate in February I met with a range of reactions. Mainly people were mildly inquisitive, wondering if we had family or friends here. Some were openly quite startled that we’d chosen to go so far north in the wettest winter the UK’s had, possibly ever. And a few commented on how Harrogate is meant to have excellent shopping. I doubt they meant the charity shops, but as we left the hotel in the bitter cold; a dusting of snow becoming slush; the icy wind battering us, we slipped through a couple of places and possibilities. A tour of the Mercer Gallery was interesting, although it left me feeling a degree of despair at humanity (paintings centred on the plight of seamstresses in the 1880s seemed far too close to our modern debates about the treatment of workers in mass market clothing factories). The pump room museum was intriguingly eclectic and entertained us for a while. We pottered for a while before slipping into Betty’s Tearooms which I understand are something of a landmark. It was a very pleasant experience, but as Kathryn commented, we’ve been somewhat spoilt by (the now very sadly defunct) lahloo. We are both aware that we have become staggering snobs on the coffee / tea / cookery front, incidentally. But they are one of the few areas of life where you don’t have to be really rich to get really excellent quality. Anyhow, the whole experience was nice and it’s more about the history and atmosphere; at least to some extent. The tea itself was, sadly, somewhat of a disappointment.
We then slithered out in search of boots. See, my poor tired converse one-stars have about reached the end of their working life and looking at Harrogate we hoped the charity shops might score us some high end booty. It turned out to be not the case. Although there are a boatload of high end stores here, the charity shops mainly contained the same sort of stuff as in Bristol. Also, I had the deeply distressing experience of finding 4 pairs of boots one size too small where I liked all of them. No joy on the shoe/boot front so far. We then headed back up to the hotel for a pleasant evening of doing nothing.
Day 3 – Hebden Bridge
For years I’ve intended to visit the North’s lesbian capital; a small town that has been revived by an alternative and lesbian populations immigration to the area. Finally today we made it in. I don’t quite know what I expected, but it was fairly much my subconscious idea of what happens when a large number of lesbians land up in one area. Artsy, queer, good food and coffee, it is pretty much all there. I think though that the UK press’s coverage had left me expecting to wade through knee deep piles of queer people, which wasn’t exactly the case. Whilst everyone we met may have been queer, there wasn’t as much obvious queerness, so p’raps that’s what I missed. At any rate it was a very nice village, although the weather we encountered was somewhat unpleasant. But that’s February in the North of England.
Most of the rest of the day was taken up with the drive there and back; which was picturesque (although we ended up travelling up what felt like a near vertical incline of a cobbled and in very poor condition street after missing a GPS turn; Rebecca made it up, but it was eyewateringly steep and rough).
Day 3 – Harrogate again
So our plan for today centred around luxury. Unfortunately it’s not quite gone perfectly; mainly due to our lack of organisation. We failed to book our massages far enough in advance and so the places we wanted to go were booked up. But we spent the morning in the Victorian splendour of the Turkish Baths. Whilst most of Harrogate’s expansive spa facilities have been lost to the ravages of modernisation, the utterly gorgeous Turkish Baths have survived fairly untouched and once you’ve slipped past their modern entrance hall you’re safely embraced in the warm and fanciful delights of a Victorian take on Moorish architecture. The process as explained was: sauna, cold shower, cold plunge bath, hot room, cold shower, cold plunge bath, hotter room, cold shower, cold plunge bath, hottest room, warm shower, cool down in the rest area. The hottest room is at a startling 68°ree;C, which when you think about going and sitting in a 70°ree;C room seems like insanity, but actually it turns out the whole thing is delicious.
It did take me until the third round of plunge bath to make it pretty much the full length of the cold plunge bath without wimping out spectacularly it’s seriously cold!). But I would love to have the kind of lifestyle where his kind of activity was a more than once off.
Again, the weather trundled into unpleasantness, and we hid ourselves away in Bean and Bud where we had a very nice coffee and a tea, before pottering out on another charity shop quest. Me continuing to hunt for new boots because my converse are beyond scabby, and Kathryn for some nice jeans. Irritatingly I continued to find both in charity shops and in new shoe shop’s sales that they had sizes either size of mine, but none in my size , at least in my size that I liked.
After a bit of hunting we headed back to the hotel to hide from the rain…
Day 4 – York
We had all sorts of non shop related plans for Saturday; trundling into York by train we headed through the delightful city with its medieval buildings to the art gallery which, contrary to the map’s statements (“closed to 2014”) is closed through 2014. Faced with the icy winds and having stood for the entire cramped train journey, we first opted to try the Minster. Then we saw the prices. If you’re into churches, £10 to see the inside (but not the tower) is probably fine, but given that we’re neither of us more than holders of a passing interest in churches (gorgeous architechure, but not a must see) after some rapid deliberation standing out of the worst of the wind we headed instead to find lunch; Kathryn’s internet research having led us to the Hairy Fig. Given the number of people I watched who arrived after us in this tiny four table café and who were disappointed by the café’s little ‘full’ sign we were damn lucky.
It was without doubt the best food we’ve had on this holiday. Gorgeous fresh ingredients, layered complexity of flavours and to top it off, nice friendly service.
Yum!
Then we headed off to Treasurer’s house (not “The Treasurer’s House”, as our guide explained, the name is a nod to the site, rather than an actual Treasurer’s house). Funnily enough, despite the house’s 17th ct. origins, the tour is entirely based around Frank Green’s life. This is because between his architect and collecting habits, the house was extensively transformed in the late 19th and early 20th century. It may be they do other tours later in the year; certainly they seem to uncover more of the house later in the year, but it was an excellent tour and totally fascinating.
After some more wandering around the city; a little finding of some locally made wool, and a bit more charity-shop boot hunting (it was too late to go spendy spendy in any of the museums) we hit up a local coffee shop (Filmore and Union) which was delightful; not least for the very friendly barrister who was very chatty and with whom we had a great Bristol-Selling conversation).
We then headed back on a less pleasant train containing a bunch of loud boys drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels between them and behaving in the manner that you’d expect a group of boys drunk on neat JD’s to behave. Never mind.
Still, despite the icy cold York was very pleasant and scheduled mentally for another visit in the not too distant future.
Day 5 – Nationally Trusted Out
So we piled back into Rebecca today and made our way first to East Riddlesden Hall (a 17th Century, approximately, hall). Sadly, whilst the guides were friendly, they weren’t quite as utterly brilliant as the woman who showed us Treasurer’s House. The house itself was fascinating though, in a reading-the-architecture way. Unfortunately, it’d had some water ingress during the winter, closing a section off, but it was one of those ‘originally started in the 1300s’ buildings, where someone built a bit here, pulled a bit down there, threw up some new stuff here…
And then some dappy 19th century sod built an entire new wing that had to be taken down before it fell down. When you walk in there’s this enormous grand fireplace in a dinky little hall, called the ‘Great Hall’. The reason being that the person who built the fireplace died before the modifications he’d planned could be completed, so the dirty great fireplace is sat in a temporary building, albeit one made from stone. Also, there’s a fireplace halfway up the wall. Anyhow, it’s an enjoyably quirky building… and it also contains some really lovely clocks…
Finding ourselves at a loose end after that, we decided to dash across to Nunnington Hall, which we didn’t really get as much time in as we’d like. We kinda dashed around because we’d paused there to have lunch, and then also spent some time looking at the, err, art exhibit, which was, um, not to our taste… but that sadly ate time where we could have been wandering around the house.
The house contains some truly stunning items, including some very early wallpaper with the most sumptuous colours. Also, in the garden lurk some quite lovely peacocks and peahens. The peahen we met seemed much happier modelling for the camera than the peacock, who, for all his showy tail just kept running around the place. Boys! Humph!
Day 6 – Home again, home again (tra-la-la)
We tweaked our route home to include a couple of spots we’ve been wanting to hit. The first was the National Media Museum at Bradford. I’ve wanted to visit this for years and perhaps my expectations were too high. There were definitely some nice exhibits, and time-wise we made some decisions that may have meant we missed some great bits. But the photography section seemed a homage to Kodak more than a commentary on photography in general; and some of the exhibits were really in a pretty sorry state. Particularly the ‘What the Butler Saw’ machines (or Mutoscopes) – where many of the images were missing or broken, and the whole thing was misaligned so you could only really see the top third of the cards. That was sad…
…however, the animation gallery contained some beautiful images and sets
including the only remaining set from Aardman’s early animations. It’s such a crying shame the others were destroyed (by fire) because looking at the remaining set you see so many gorgeous touches that aren’t really visible on film; some truly delightful and playful things…
Then we flew down the country, stopping at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Again, our timing was less than perfect, although it proved to us that we need to go back up there and spend some quality time in the grounds. However, we got enough time there to have a good look at the Angie Lewin exhibition which was inspiring and delightful; and we got to see some Barbara Hepworth, albeit briefly.
Now, Barbara Hepworth I’ve appreciated technically before, but never really loved, but seeing it out in the open air it makes so much more sense. It works in a way it simply doesn’t in a gallery. She said it should be outside to breathe, and it should.
And that was it, we then sat on the motorway for a few hours, Rebecca’s engine humming away and the rain beating down, before we pulled up at home, unpacked, and returned to reality.