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Getting out of bed in the morning really isn't our strong point, and although the alarm went off at 8am, we didn't surface until 9am, and then we pottered around for a while getting our breakfast before I remembered that as we were planning to visit Beamish and then go on to Angela's for dinner that I needed to telephone Angela before 10am to confirm that we were visiting that evening rather than the following one.
The decision about which evening to visit was made when we saw the CountryFile forecast for the week ahead and mostly dry days were predicted for every day except Tuesday, and as Angela's available evenings were Monday and Tuesday, going up to Beamish on Monday was really a no-brainer. (Angela lives very close to Beamish in County Durham.)
However, we hit a snag when I tried to phone Angela from my mobile: no signal! Stephen's mobile is on a different network, so trying his was the next option, but his was in his jacket in the boot of the car and we were still in our night attire. The cottage is out in the countryside and the rest of the barn conversion appears to be unoccupied for the week, so I went out in my nightie to retrieve Stephen's phone. That didn't work either.
So then we scrambled into some clothes, thinking that we would have to drive elsewhere to find a mobile signal, but Stephen took his mobile outside and found that he got a signal, so we phoned Angela's mobile and got her voicemail. Then I decided to text her, and she got both messages.
We had quick showers and headed out the door, but called in at Morrisons, which was really in the wrong direction, because Stephen had seen a good deal on SD cards in the store in Oxted last week. Unfortunately, Morrisons in Ripon weren't carrying that special offer, so the time spent picking up a few groceries may have been better spent getting to Beamish a bit earlier.
Beamish is at a place called Stanley which is just to the north west of Durham, and a little over an hour's drive from the cottage in Grewelthorpe. We made good time up the A1(M) and arrived at Beamish at about 1pm, which gave us the whole afternoon there.
It's quite a spread-out site, but involved less walking than the previous day's excursion to Fountains Abbey because all of the attractions at Beamish are connected by a circular tramway. There's also a bus service between the Town and the Colliery Village.
We started off by catching the tram clockwise to the Home Farm, where we saw stabled horses, poultry and old machinery. Then we crossed the road and went down to the Colliery Village, where there's a school, a chapel which we somehow missed going into, and a row of miner's cottages with real living people enacting out some of the tasks that the mining community would have done. There were two pit ponies in a field by the Colliery Village, and one of the ponies actually worked down the pits, and by a stroke of luck, there was a retired man there giving the ponies some carrots, and he had actually worked with the pony who had led a working life down the pits.
We then went past the mine buildings and cut across through some woodland to the Pockerley Waggonway. A steam engine was going up and down the line and we went along for a ride. It was only a short ride, but was long enough for me to take a picture of the engine driver which may well be the best picture I took during my whole holiday. There was a wonderful weather vane on the nearby engine shed. It has a wrought iron train, complete with trailing cloud of smoke extending over the waggons. I nearly bought a postcard of it, but decided to rely on my own photo for my records, and my own photo isn't nearly as good as the one I didn't purchase.
We skipped Pockerley Manor due to lack of time and caught the anticlockwise tram up to the Town. That is a wonderful place! The shops are set out as shops used to be arranged before the days of self service and I'm just old enough to remember when you went up to the long wooden counter in a shop and asked the assistant for your needs, which would be taken down from the shelves behind the counter. We didn't see the flying fox demonstrated, but I believe that there was one there to send payment to a cashier's box away from the counter. There were also some beautiful old cash registers on display.
We were also entertained to see posters for Stephens Inks in both the school at the Colliery Village and the stationers in the Town. A mirrored sign in one of the shops for Andrews Liver Salts was also of particular interest to us. It took a lot of effort to get a sharp photo of it which didn't contain unwanted reflections. It was eventually achieved with a prime lens wide open on the K10D with shake reduction turned on.
We didn't get time to see into the cottages at the Town, which was a pity, as they would undoubtedly have been interesting. However, we were fortunate that the final tram was running anticlockwise, as it took us past the funfair, which we didn't have time to visit. We also got the opportunity to get photos of the Colliery Village from the vantage point of the tram.
Upon leaving Beamish, we were a bit early to go straight to Angela's place, so decided to fill up with fuel, and just as we arrived at the petrol station, Angela texted us to say that she was home and we could arrive any time, so we came out the petrol station, which was just down the road from Angela's place and were knocking on her door within about 10 minutes of receiving her text.
Angela welcomed us and found us something to drink while she finished organising dinner. She had things in her regular oven, her combination oven, and in a set of stacked steamers on the stove. We had chunks of roast beef covered with dumpling, crispy potatoes, a choice of about five different vegetables and gravy. Angela has a round table in her huge kitchen, and she put the vegetables on a lazy susan in the middle, which could then be rotated to "pass the vegetables". That was quite some plateful, and when Angela offered us seconds, we had to decline or there simply wouldn't have been room for afters.
Afters was apple pie. There was ordinary pouring cream for Stephen and Angela, and the Alpro soya version for me.
We had a tour of Angela's new house, which she's got completely to her liking in only a few months, and then we went and sat in her living room on her brown squashy leather sofas which look just right in her new house.
We had the obligatory photo of the three of us and Angela managed to close her eyes on both pictures. We thought Stephen might have his eyes shut and checked him on the back panel of my camera, but didn't realise that Angela's eyes were shut in both photos, so I never checked her. What an annoying omission on my part!
It was gone 10pm when we left Angela's place, and we had an hour's drive back to Grewelthorpe. We approached Ripon from a different direction and had to do a circuit of the one way system before we found the right road to head out to the cottage.
There are a lot of streets in Ripon which are suffixed by "gate". I wonder whether it was originally a walled town. Maybe we will find out later in the week!
More from our October 2007 holiday in Yorkshire: Yorkshire Holiday Travelogue - 9th October, 2007
Back to Yorkshire Holiday Travelogue - 7th October, 2007
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Last Revised: 22nd October, 2007.