Yorkshire, Day 6 (Sunday)

According the BBC Weather prediction, Sunday was to be a bit cooler and cloudier than Saturday was, with a few showers. So, of course the day dawned with crisp clear bright blue skies, fluffy white clouds, and not a hint of rain anywhere in site. It ended up being the most beautiful day we've had on this trip so far. So much for BBC Weather.

We visited Castle Howard, a 300-year old estate and mansion house in North Yorkshire. The house and furnishings were exquisite, and it's the site where both versions of Brideshead Revisited were filmed, if you are enough of an anglophile (I am!) to be excited by that. The one odd bit about the house was that amongst the classic old Chippendale furniture, ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, Rubens and landscape paintings, modern-day photos of the children who currently live in the house were displayed. There's something about a glossy 8 x 10 of young Merlin or his sister Octavia doing a cannonball into a hotel pool that distracts from the historial grandeur of the mansion. But I digress. I was tickled by the "Labrador Welfare" tent on the ground of the house. In the states they would probably have a "Feed the Children" charity tent erected, but here in Yorkshire, the fate of homeless Labrador retrievers is a much more pressing concern. Did I mention how I feel so much more at home on this side of the pond?



After lunch in the stable-yard cafe at Castle Howard, we set off across the Yorkshire Moors for Rievaulx Abbey. Set deep in the picturesque valley of the River Rye and surrounded by hedgerows, grazing sheep, and thatched cottages, it was so far the most beautiful and serene place we had visited. The Abbey and the monastery were in ruins, but that only made them more breathtaking. We scrambled over the ruins for a while, snarked at Russian tourists taking fashionista-posed photos, then headed back to York for a bit of a rest before our Indian feast.