A few days in the North…
Had some leave from work last week so I took the opportunity to visit an old friend now dwelling in North Yorkshire, and here are some of the photos resulting from this brief sojourn in Richmond and surrounds…
Celebrating 150 years of the London Underground, at King’s Cross and St. Pancras Tube station…
I caught the East Coast line train from Platform 1 on the King’s Cross to Edinburgh service, as far as Darlington…although it is not perhaps as thrilling a journey as Harry Potter’s journeys were on the Hogwarts Express from Platform 9¾ 😉
Platform 9¾, at King’s Cross mainline station…
Darlington is important in the history of railways, as explained here…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_and_Darlington_Railway
I was heading for Richmond, which is no longer served by a railway line, so it was a half-hour bus journey on the Arriva X26 bus service instead, from a bus stop not far from this clock tower…
West Row, in Darlington town centre…
Arriving in Richmond mid-afternoon on Tuesday, I made for a Wetherspoon’s pub near the town centre, The Ralph Fitz Randal, for some welcome food and drink (a jacket potato with five bean chilli, some chips, and a pint of Summer Ale), to await my old friend, who’d been out for a walk that afternoon with a local rambling group. This photo was taken in the afternoon sun, in Friary Gardens, opposite the pub…
Flowers in sunlight, in front of Greyfriars Tower, in Friary Gardens, Richmond, North Yorkshire
On the Wednesday morning I wandered down to The Station, now converted to an café/cinema/exhibition space, and which this week was hosting the touring photographic exhibition Best Shots. Excellent it is too, so go see it if you get the chance locally…
http://www.bestshots.co.uk/tour
This photo was taken on the way back from The Station to the town centre…
Richmond Castle…
I later met up with my friend for a drive up to County Durham, to look at a few buildings thereabouts, Egglestone Abbey, Barnard Castle, and Raby Castle…
Barnard Castle, County Durham…
The River Tees, through a window at Barnard Castle…
Raby Castle, County Durham, home of Lord Barnard…
Antlered deer in the grounds of Raby Castle…
On the Thursday, I spent the morning exploring Richmond town centre, and paying a visit to Richmond Castle, which is fortunately (as is Barnard Castle) an English Heritage property, which I get into for free, being a Member…
Poster in the window of a shop in Finkle Street, Richmond…
The Keep at Richmond Castle…
Hmmm, seemingly a dangerous place, Richmond Castle…;)
Danger Steep Slope, at Richmond Castle…
Danger Sudden Drop, at Richmond Castle…
Flowers on the walls of Richmond Castle…
The Market Place, from the top of the Keep at Richmond Castle…
We then spent the afternoon in a circular tour of Swaledale and Wensleydale in my friend’s car, and there are some wonderful views to be had in this part of the world…:)
A sheep at Marrick, in Swaledale…
A cow at Marrick, in Swaledale…
Sheep at a water tap, near Marrick, in Swaledale
Sheep grazing near the River Swale, near Marrick…
The town of Reeth in Swaledale…
On the road from Muker to Hawes…
An artist on the road from Muker to Hawes…
View westwards on the road to Hawes from Muker…
On the (literally) high road to Ribblehead from Hawes…
The weather had been fine for most of the week in North Yorkshire, but on Friday the rains came down, so we spent most of the day at the extraordinary Bowes Museum, outside Barnard Castle, which, incidentally, has a very good café, Café Bowes, on the premises…
Bowes Museum, at Barnard Castle, County Durham…
Every day at 2 pm, this 18th Century automaton, The Silver Swan, gives a forty second performance…
http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk/collections/the-silver-swan/history/
Awaiting the 2 pm performance of the Silver Swan, at Bowes Museum…
The Silver Swan in motion…
The Silver Swan, not moving…
…and the silver fishes…
A Pierrot, circa 1900, when wound up, his hands play the harp…
A Penny Farthing bicycle…
A couple of exhibits relating to Messrs Mason and Dixon, immortalised by the Mason-Dixon Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland in the United States…
Jeremiah Dixon…
A journal of Charles Mason…
Plenty of good paintings in the Bowes museum, and I rather liked this one…;)
Come back and see me again sometime ;)…
I was taking no chances on missing my connection back to London on Saturday morning, and caught the 09.01 X26 bus back from Richmond Market Place to Darlington Station…
In very good time…
Homeward bound…
A Weekend Diary 
Hi, your tags don’t work. I think I worked out that you’re allowed no more than 14 (15 which includes the group “North Yorkshire” you’ve put it under), and no three word tags work, or none of them show up. I think that’s what they’ve changed it to. WP make it very hard to keep up with their “rules”. The best thing I find is to check after posting that it’s visible under some of those tags. Hope this helps.
FM
Okay, that’s interesting, and thanks for making me aware of it. I’ll bear your comments in mind when tagging future posts. That said, all the tags show up on my PC both when I’m logged in, and logged out, and when I click on them it brings up the relevant post(s), but that may not be true for others ;). Thanks for commenting anyway :).
Oh, is that just tags within your own blog? I don’t know about that, and if that’s what you’re more interested in then please ignore the comment. I meant if you go to the topic search under the reader – searching all blogs with those topics – and if you look for West Row it comes up with none.
I wish they’d set out proper guidelines somewhere to explain all this.
Yes, I was referring to the tags within my own blog. To be honest, I’ve very rarely used the Topics search in the Reader (for all its potential usefulness), but in the light of your comments, I’ve now done some experimental searches, with the following results. Firstly, whichever ‘A few days in the North’ tags I searched for in the Topics, failed to show up the said post in the Reader, so it seems that if you transgress whatever WordPress ‘rules’ have been imposed, it apparently invalidates all the tags for that post. Secondly, I did a search for ‘Chilton Chine’ and ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ in the Topics Reader, and it did show up the previous post (the one with the title in Russian) for both searches (even though one of the tags has three words). Incidentally, I’m very surprised that mine was the only post it showed up for the two latter searches; I can’t believe that no one has ever used those two tags on WordPress before. Anyway, I’ll limit my tags to around a dozen in future posts, and see what effect that has on Topic searches in the Reader ;).