So, brief highlights post of the last two weeks.
The walk two Sundays ago was quite nice. We started at the top of Sutton Bank, a very steep drop-off from the hills that makes up most of the North Yorkshire Moors. We then walked down by the Kilburn White Horse, a chalk horse on the hillside, while small planes pulling gliders took off above us. Then there was trees, mud, some really pretty horses, and a lot of walking through fields and young forests. There was a stunning patch of snowdrops and a really pretty little lake with a sandy bottom that had ripples in it - it looked like an underwater zen garden.
We had lunch at a pub in Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe, which apparently (according to Wikipedia) is the longest place name of anywhere in England. whilst waiting for out food I was messing with my camera, and I pressed what was apparently a very incorrect button, and lost all my photos. Oops. Luckily, on our walk back we did a good bit of backtracking, so I managed to re-take some of my photos (see my web album).
The next big event was the Jorvik Viking Festival - a week-long celebration of York's Viking ad Anglo-Saxon heritage. It was great. And I have more to say about it, but I also really, really want to go eat breakfast and get ready to leave for London for the weekend - so for now, check out the photos in the above-linked album.
Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hiking. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Still Catching Up
I'm still behind on updates!
This past week I finished my first British essay, then spent my whole Sunday out on the moors, getting cold and damp and so, so muddy and having a wonderful time of it. York's Outdoor Society leads hikes (simply called walks here) every Sunday to beautiful hiking places in the area - of which there are quite a few, as we're just south of North Yorkshire Moors National Park and not that far from Yorkshire Dales National Park.
This hike was at Goathland in the North Yorkshire Moors - a stunningly pretty place, all told, with big moors on top of the hills and green valleys below, beautiful forests, a raging river, old stone buildings and bridges, lots and lots of mud, and sheep wandering everywhere; everything the English countryside is meant to be, really.
And, this being England, if you take the medium walk (one short walk in the morning, one in the afternoon - maybe 6 miles all told), you spend a long lunch break in a pub in the nearest village, eating hearty food and "puddings" (dessert), drinking tea or lager, and sitting as close as possible to the radiator in hopes of drying off a bit before you set off again.
You can, of course, see many photos of this adventure here.
Other than that, it has been a fairly chill week. Last night Tom and I went to Evensong at the Minster, which was really nice. I think I'm going to be going a lot, actually. It's close, it's pretty music, it's in a ridiculously, overwhelmingly beautiful place, and it's free. All good things.
Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, aka Mardi Gras - which is mostly known as Pancake Day here. Some Americans might recognize the concept - we used to have Shrove Tuesday pancake dinners at church when I was a kid. These pancakes were quite different, more like what Americans would call crepes. A few Brits invited some of we Americans to come have made-from-scratch pancakes in a dorm kitchen, so Tom and Anna and Becky and I filled up on so much jam and Nutella and chocolate and syrup and... well, there were pancakes in there somewhere, too. That was nice.
Tonight is a huge pub-crawl type event in town (one of the big annual social events at York), Sunday I'm going for another walk, and next week is the Jorvik Viking Festival, so I've got a full calender lined up. Should be great!
Also : Spring is coming, to a certain extent. There are snowdrops and crocuses (including some of a stunning light purple colour that looks like it is glowing) popping up all over campus, and I saw forsythia in bloom in someone's garden. It's odd, that, what with it being February, but I guess it never really gets that cold here - although we did see snow on the walk last weekend, leftovers from a big storm they had earlier that week.
This past week I finished my first British essay, then spent my whole Sunday out on the moors, getting cold and damp and so, so muddy and having a wonderful time of it. York's Outdoor Society leads hikes (simply called walks here) every Sunday to beautiful hiking places in the area - of which there are quite a few, as we're just south of North Yorkshire Moors National Park and not that far from Yorkshire Dales National Park.
This hike was at Goathland in the North Yorkshire Moors - a stunningly pretty place, all told, with big moors on top of the hills and green valleys below, beautiful forests, a raging river, old stone buildings and bridges, lots and lots of mud, and sheep wandering everywhere; everything the English countryside is meant to be, really.
And, this being England, if you take the medium walk (one short walk in the morning, one in the afternoon - maybe 6 miles all told), you spend a long lunch break in a pub in the nearest village, eating hearty food and "puddings" (dessert), drinking tea or lager, and sitting as close as possible to the radiator in hopes of drying off a bit before you set off again.
You can, of course, see many photos of this adventure here.
Other than that, it has been a fairly chill week. Last night Tom and I went to Evensong at the Minster, which was really nice. I think I'm going to be going a lot, actually. It's close, it's pretty music, it's in a ridiculously, overwhelmingly beautiful place, and it's free. All good things.
Tuesday was Shrove Tuesday, aka Mardi Gras - which is mostly known as Pancake Day here. Some Americans might recognize the concept - we used to have Shrove Tuesday pancake dinners at church when I was a kid. These pancakes were quite different, more like what Americans would call crepes. A few Brits invited some of we Americans to come have made-from-scratch pancakes in a dorm kitchen, so Tom and Anna and Becky and I filled up on so much jam and Nutella and chocolate and syrup and... well, there were pancakes in there somewhere, too. That was nice.
Tonight is a huge pub-crawl type event in town (one of the big annual social events at York), Sunday I'm going for another walk, and next week is the Jorvik Viking Festival, so I've got a full calender lined up. Should be great!
Also : Spring is coming, to a certain extent. There are snowdrops and crocuses (including some of a stunning light purple colour that looks like it is glowing) popping up all over campus, and I saw forsythia in bloom in someone's garden. It's odd, that, what with it being February, but I guess it never really gets that cold here - although we did see snow on the walk last weekend, leftovers from a big storm they had earlier that week.
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