Yorkshire in Repose
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
Ripon
After seven days of non-stop sightseeing, it was time to step back and slow things down. On Friday afternoon we stepped out of our apartment and, for the first time, walked not to our car but the short distance between our front door and the city center.
Turns out the place we have been calling home for the past week—the place we had launched trip after trip from, but never stopped to explore—was actually quite a nice town, filled with beautiful buildings and a charming town square.
Which is to highlight how our lives continues to be a tightrope walk; how we must be intentional about not diminishing our overall experience with an overpacked agenda.
There is an arc to our journey, one that began with so much eagerness and anticipation, there was little room for sadness. But the ball is past its apogee now, and time and distance suddenly seem more profound.
If eagerness defined the first half, the second half seems destined to be an emotional tug of war between longing to be home with family and eagerly anticipating our next adventure.
These two seemingly opposite emotions operating simultaneously feel like a schizophrenic light switch being flipped on and off, off and on, in the most random and unpredictable way.
I know, I know…boo hoo…isn’t it tough being on vacation all the time!? I’m less hoping for sympathy than sharing our experiences, providing a glimpse into the rollercoaster a long journey such as ours entails—one we anticipated in some ways, yet could never fully imagine until it was the life we were living.
While we are still very much enjoying the ride, that joy is sometimes only found after a long pep talk—talks that seem to occur with increasing frequency lately.
Which brings us to the blanket and camp chair resting on the lawn outside Ripon Cathedral. Here we spent about an hour: warmed by the sun, toes grounded in the grass, and minds lost in books—an intentional escape within an escape.
We were right there…A sign said no cost to visit…So we wandered inside…
Now, don’t worry, there are not a hundred cathedral pictures awaiting as your scroll down the screen.
Here is a window for the Neumanns, “Entreat me not to leave thee,” with Ruth (left) and Naomi (right).
Ripon Cathedral did hold a really unexpected and very cool surprise—serendipity is the best!
I am walking under these organ pipes and into the quire, when I see a dad pointing out to his son a number of animals that are carved into the quire stalls.
My interest piques; I look to see what they what they see.
Sure enough, an elephant with a tower on his back and people hiding inside, and a man curled curiously in his trunk…
An ax-weilding centaur…
A lion thingy…
A money with a collar around his neck?
Then I see a cathedral volunteer telling a young girl to step up on one of the misericords (folding quire seat) and look at a particular carving in the very back stall.
When she’s done, I tell him the big kid wants to see too!
There, carved under the misericord, is a hippogriff chasing a rabbit who subsequently escapes down a hole.
It turns out, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who wrote the famous book Alice in Wonderland under the pen name Lewis Carroll, lived in Ripon as a young man. His father was canon of Ripon Cathedral from 1852 until 1858, and Carroll spent a lot of his childhood wandering the cathedral. It’s not hard to imagine him fascinated by all the weird and wonderful images hidden all around the quire.
Did the carved griffin chasing a rabbit down a hole on one misericord inspire Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole?
A small misshapen character on another misericord looks rather like Alice after she followed the “drink me” instruction and shrank. When Lewis Carroll drew the picture of Alice when she shrank, she looked just like one of these odd creations. (Sorry, I didn’t see this one. Most of the stalls are roped off, so you simply cannot see many of the carvings.)
And then there is the curious crypt that runs under the cathedral (very near the rabbit carving). Reputedly based on the tomb of Jesus Christ, this crypt is the oldest surviving structure of any cathedral in England.
Built in 672 by St Wilfred, the crypt predates England itself by 255 years. Accessed by steep and narrow steps, a claustrophobic and gloomy passageway winds underneath the medieval cathedral. This cramped tunnel leads to a white painted void, believed by its creators to be a faithful representation of Jesus’s modest tomb.
With an arched ceiling, a simple altar, and a 14th-century alabaster carving of the resurrection, the otherwise chilly emptiness of this simple whitewashed crypt disguises its rich historical significance.
In addition to the crypt, a complex system of gypsum caves lies beneath Ripon, once accessible through subsidence holes.
One can easily arrive at the very plausible conclusion that the creative mind of Carroll was inspired by the many figures—particularly the rabbit down the hole, the crypt under the cathedral, and the caves under the city.
Also, these carvings high in the South Transept are supposedly the Queen of Hearts (top) and the Cheshire Cat (bottom).
Another eye-catching wooden carvings is the mysterious hand above the entrance to the quire.
This mechanical hand, which still works, was installed in 1695 so that the organist could simultaneously conduct the choir while playing the organ. Ingenious!
Sadly I do not possess the creative genius of Carroll, but I did find the many curious features of the cathedral fascinating and inspirational. I’m glad we decided to go down this rabbit hole!
Farewall Yorkshire
On Saturday morning we packed our car and headed northwest, but there was one last Yorkshire site we needed to visit.
Alone in an ocean of moorland, far from the nearest town, and many miles from its next-door neighbor, sits the Tan Hill Inn.
No one is really sure how long the pub has been here, but the roads across the moor that lead here follow lines of ancient tracks believed to date back over 5,000 years ago to Neolithic times.
Viking and Celts called it Tan Heol, which roughly translates as Hill of Fire. These early Britons were known to build huge beacons and sacrificial pyres lit to celebrate the summer solstice, midwinter, the coming of spring, and other pagan rites.
Over the centuries shepherds, drovers, miners, and packhorse traders have used this lonely inn. In modern times the inn has hosted millions of walkers, travelers, and tourists. The inn has also been featured in dozens of TV dramas and commercials, and hosted the Arctic Monkeys.
You can read all about the Tan Hill Inn in this book if you’re interested.
Perched alone at an elevation of 1,732 feet above sea level, the Inn is listed as one of a handful of Dark Sky sites in Britain. A million stars, and sometimes the Northern Lights, shine overhead at night.
The Inn also claims to be the highest in elevation in Britain. With Britain’s highest peak being just over 4,000 feet, I guess 1,732 is something to brag about.
Jab at them all I want, but on a Friday evening in late November 2021, the Tan Hill Inn made international news when high winds and snow from Storm Arwen stranded in the inn 61 people who had come to hear the Oasis cover band Noasis—now nicknamed Snow-asis.
The storm also brought down power lines across the road, so snow ploughs were unable to clear the road until early Monday morning. After three days of pub quizzes, board games, and karaoke—everyone was able to finally leave.
During the event, Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher tweeted he was jealous as he was "always trying to get a lock in.”
In December 2022, a reunion was held at the Tan Hill Inn.
It’s a quintessentially British pastime to brag about being the “—est” of this or that. Oldest, highest, etc.
So, at 1,732 feet, The Tan Hill Inn is the highest pub in England. You may recall us visiting the Warren House Inn in Dartmoor National Park. At an elevation of 1,425 feet, Warrenouse brags about being the highest Inn in Southern England. So as ensure their uniqueness in the world, they also claim the Warren House Inn is “said to be the loneliest” pub in England. So add “loneliest” to the list!
The Porch House in Stow-on-the-Wold claims to be the oldest pub in England with parts of the building having been carbon dated as far back as the year 947. Impressive to be sure, but the building appear not to have been used as a pub until the 1700s.
So confident is Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, they have boldly painted their claim to oldest pub in England right in large letters on the building. The inn is built into the same rocks upon which Nottingham Castle stands, and the name indicates it was once perhaps a stop upon the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Inside, you can sit and drink in caves that have been carved out of the rock, and peer at curiosities including a cursed ship which kills anyone who cleans it, and a chair which is said to increase one’s chances of becoming pregnant. Standard pub ornaments, really.
In Scotland, the White Hart Inn claims to be Edinburgh's “most ancient tavern.”
The Parrot claims to be not just the oldest pub in Canterbury, but one of the oldest buildings in the city—built on Roman foundations in 1370 just inside the Roman City Wall.
The Lamb and Flag in the Covent Garden section of London claims to be the “bloodiest” pub for the attack on the poet John Dryden in 1679 in the alleyway beside the pub and for the staging of bare-knuckle prize fights in the early nineteenth century.
The Clachan Inn north of Glasgow was licensed in 1734, which makes it one of the longest running licenses in the UK. The woman who got the pub its license, a Mistress Gow, was said to be the sister of legendary outlaw Rob Roy, and this claim has been widely accepted as making The Clachan Inn the oldest in Scotland. Unless, of course, it’s actually…
The Sheep Heid Inn reportedly opened in 1360, which would make this the oldest surviving public house in Scotland. The oldest record of the name “Sheep Heid Inn” comes in 1710, which you’ll note would still be old enough to supersede its competitor. Whatever the case, this one is a firm favorite with royals: Mary Queen of Scots was a known visitor, James I presented the landlord with a snuff box as a token of his appreciation, and Elizabeth II dropped by for a visit in 2016.
At the end of the day, it’s all about having a good story. And who are we kidding, we’re mostly here for the bragging rights ourselves! 😂
Oh, and to get a pint of real ale, of course!
It was a very fun diversion and we enjoyed getting to see this famously isolated spot.
Travelers
Our final destination was the Lake District village of Ambleside, at the northern end of Windermere lake.
There were no large grocery stores in Ambleside, so we drove toward the town of Kendal, just outside the southwestern entrance to Lake District National Park.
We were driving along A685 in the northwestern part of Yorkshire Dales National Park when we encountered Travelers camped along both sides of the two-lane highway.
Travelers are primarily Irish in heritage. Historically they were once great tinsmiths, but the use of plastics hit them hard as their skills were no longer required. This is why they were also called Tinkers at one point of time.
They famously like to fight, so I made Amanda stop filming before we slowed down too much and I got dragged out of the our stupid little Spanish car and pulverized. See them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7rCI1p0LFk
We stopped filming, but this went on for some three miles; all told, there must have been at least a thousand Travelers in that stretch of road. Crazy!
Anyway, that’s it. No more fanfare after that. We made it to the Sainsbury in Kendal and then onto our apartment in Ambleside—which we’ll share with you in our next post.
We absolutely loved Yorkshire. It was a gloriously beautiful part of England, full of a long string of amazing sites and places we’ll never forget! Our day exploring the churches and houses associated with All Creatures Great and Small was one of the most epic of our journey thus far
