Our travels to England and Ireland (part 3 – Northern UK)

I haven’t bored you to death yet have I  ?

I forgot in the last part to mention that before we went to London we went to Stonehenge.   That’s saying something isn’t it.    If it were me, I’d have given it a miss but my husband insisted we go.

It was as I expected….the stones were far less impressive that any photographs, there were hundreds of tourist taking annoying selfies and everything was set up to be a tourist trap.   I took some obligatory photo’s anyway.

So, after London, because we enjoyed the Dartmoore moors so much we decided to travel up to see the Yorkshire moors, which I knew would be different, perhaps not as scenic, but we were to stay very close to Whitby which we’d heard was a lovely scenic seaside town.

This time we decided to whizz straight up the motor way instead of taking the back (hedge) roads which we were thoroughly sick of.   It still took us an entire day to get there.  Even on supposed two or three hour drives it STILL took us an entire day to get places because of our frequent toilet, food and photographic stops.

We drove in late through the misty moors and the classical station had haunting choral music playing making the experience that much more creepier.

Unlike the moors in Dartmoore, the Yorkshire moors were mostly flat and the foliage very dark, almost burnt looking.  In places and in certain lights it reminded me of what it looks like here in Australia after a bushfire.  Quite ominous and gloomy –   Just my cup of tea really.  Bearing in mind it’s out here on these moors where the infamous child killer duo, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley,  buried their victims, one of whom has never been found.

 

Whitby was lovely. Just as I imagined a quaint little English seaside village to be and is apparently is famous for Dracula…..some scene in a movie was filmed using these steps…. The 199 steps.

Whitby Abbey also is quite famous but the day we went it was closed so I took a photo from outside the walls.

The seagulls there, and indeed all over the UK and Ireland are enormous!  I don’t know what they are eating and never mind making off with your chips, these things could tear a small child from your arms.

Some other various shots in Whitby…

We also visited the beautiful Robin Hood bay which was very pretty and the walk down to the bottom had me snapping shots all over the place of all kinds of quaintness and cuteness.

 

I saw this window and it made me laugh.  Would YOU stay here?

Now somewhere in amongst all of this when we were out traversing the countryside I took a photo that is still giving me goosebumps, and making me wonder.   What do you think of this?  A car came driving up the road ahead that looked exactly like this one…then I saw an exact same car following behind so I took a pic, just because the cars themselves looked unusual.  It was not till I got back to the room and looked on my laptop that I saw how ODD the people inside the vehicle looked.  The figure in the middle to me doesn’t even look REAL.   It looks like a mannequin don’t you think? The passenger looks like a young man dressed up in a sparkly dress, with a fancy black hat and looks to be wearing a pearl necklace.  The driver….well, the driver kind of looks like a serial killer, lol!   Weird hey.

From Whitby we finally came to a decision about whether to do the lakes District or the Peaks.   We received so much conflicting opinion about this but settled on the Lakes.  As it turned out after nearly four weeks of amazing, unseasonably dry and warm weather this was to be the start of our introduction to the REAL late Autumn weather of the UK.  It turned absolutely horrible!

Fortunately we were able to visit one more amazing Abbey ruin before the rain and wind spoiled everything-  Rievaulx Abbey.

Our final day was spent braving what felt like monsoonal rain and winds.  The roads were quickly becoming quite flooded in places and of course the spectacular landscape of the Lakes and the lakes themselves were shrouded in gloom, mist and constant heavy rain.    It was quite a hairy trip to be honest and I kept thinking we were going to get stuck between flooded roads and stranded there.

Miserable view of the lake shot quickly from inside the car.

What a trip!  It was amazing, frustrating, incredible and exhausting.

The endless supply of castles, fog, beautiful Autumn colours, quaintness, weirdness….all of it…just so well worth the long journey over there.

One last one for good measure.  One of my favourite fog pictures that I’m sure will be used later in a manipulation.