In a bit of a last minute decision me and @RebekahEsme decided to meet at Ripon and go for a walk around Fountains Abbey.
Unsurprisingly we both met near Boroughbridge because we are both stupid. I went the wrong way down and ended up on the A1 heading towards Boroughbridge even though I had my sat nav on and she turned off there because “its the way dad goes” and she also had her sat nav on. Oh well.
From Boroughbridge I followed Rebekah as she said she had been a few times before (She quite likes the finer things in life like gardens and theaters. :/). We finally arrived in Ripon and I was sure I had never been to the place in my life even though I only live about 25-30 mile from there. We drove straight through Ripon and out the other side following the brown tourist attraction signs for Fountains Abbey.
When we arrived we drove down this long single track road for about half a mile until coming to a triangle in which we choose the safe bet of “Car Park”. We parked in one of the many places and got our things together. To my surprise it was quite full, lots of people had obviously decided they would come out for a walk and some fresh air even though it had just started to drizzle. (That fine rain, you know, soaks you threw).
We walked through the court yard towards the Visitors Centre / Gift Shop why I tried to get a check-in on foursquare but I had no phone reception so failed! 🙁
I never knew you had to pay to get into place like this. I go out on my bike with my dad to Hamsterly forest, which is a National Trust like Fountains Abbey and never paid a penny, but here we had to pay £9. Each!! I couldn’t get my head around the fact that you paid to walk around, in a few fields in the rain. Beyond crazy. Oh well.
In the grounds the first thing we came across was a big wooden childrens play area. With Rebekah being such an, how does she put it, “Aspiring Photographer” we bolted in to have a go on the swings and take a few pictures. This shortly turned out to be the probs most time we spent in one place throughout the whole day and most of took about 50 picks in here. Got knows what the locals most of thought seeing us to muppets in there but we had fun.
After we had burned off all our childish excitement we decided to progress with walking around the grounds. 10 or so minutes later we came to a gate which had the Abbey on the other site. It was quite derelict as they all are but still looked like something from Harry Potter which was fun to see. Rebekah got down with some photography getting the best shots and playing with light settings whilst I, being a man, was trying to get into a wooden door which was locked off as I was dying to see where it lead to. 😀
When Rebekah had finished we strolled round the old abbey and then went out the back where there was a huge area of old foundations. It was signed posted what each foundation was for with things like “A Wing”, “Infirmary” and “Cells”. We strolled through these and the old archways until we came to the river/stream. We clambered over a little archway which went over a bit of the stream onto a tiny little island. On here is where we took our next batch oh photos which included some timed shots, like the one Rebekah is setting up below and some more of us pulling faces and pretending to jump in.
We explored the surroundings a bit more after this taking photos on the way until we decided to turn around since the weather was getting a bit worse.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad day out but I definitely don’t think it was worth the £9 price tag each. But at least I’ve now been once. Just once. 🙂
Heres some photos of the day.
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