ENGLAND 2000
Day 5
Cotherstone, Durham, England
Monday
May 8, 2000
Clear blue skies today - at least that was the weather in Cotherstone -- but we aren't staying home in Cotherstone -- we are headed east today -- to Skelton -- to visit Don and Jean. The weather is warm, calling for short sleeves today. We must have traveled 2 hours and during those two hours we went from sunny warm lovely weather, to thick fog, more commonly known thereabouts, as "SEA FRET"...it enveloped our car, it made the trip to an unknown town that much more challenging, but with Margaret in the back seat, my job as navigator was a wee bit easier...
After only a few wrong turns, we arrived at our appointed time, 10 o'clock on the nose - in Skelton at Don and Jean's house - and look - here's Jean opening the door to greet us. We needed little introductions as we've been writing by Email to each for a while now, and the 3 of us all bundled into their cottage to get acquainted. Don gave us a little tour of his web site and all the things he's learned to do on the computer, and Jean, being the gracious English hostess that she is, brought us a scrumptuous tray of tea and sweets...I could hardly eat a thing, I was so excited just to be here with these friends who, only days before, had been but "cyber-friends" to us. I had to pinch myself off and on all day long!
Let me introduce everyone -- here is Elkie, Don and Jean's darling collie dog... Elkie is in her late teens (in human years) and, as you can imagine, I was wanting to meet this soul for a long time now... Don and Elkie are here together. And this is Don with Paul looking on. As you can all see, he's a fine handsome figure of a Yorkshireman! We were invited to see the back garden area - here is Don with the dog who lives next door. And another view of Elkie before we set off on our adventure.
We all piled into our "Merc" - with Paul driving and Don in the navigator's seat up front, and the 3 "gals" squeezed into the back seat...Margaret took a window seat as she tends to get car sick so we didn't want to take any chances!
Our first stop, after about 30 minutes, was the car park near the entrance to the walkway leading up to Captain Cook's Monument near Great Ayton. As you can see here, the fog has not lifted yet, and we can see Margaret, Paul, Don and Jean walking off into the fog up the hill. I was always lagging way behind the group, mainly because of my bad feet, bad knees, very bad back, and because I had the camera!!
Part of the way up the walkway, we stopped for a little breather (3 guesses who needed it!) and found a lovely little bench, and where we sat down and had a break. Paul, Jean and Margaret must have found something funny about this place...and then Don took my camera and got a shot of the rest of us on the bench. This bench was in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, and someone had come along and tried to repair it with rope...we all found that incredibly funny.
Onward and upward we all walked, not really seeing much past 20 feet in front of us! Once at the top, we arrived at the Captain James Cook Monument, and I got a picture of Jean, Don, Paul and Margaret standing in front of it. Poor Don, he was heartbroken that we could not see the most incredible views from up here...I really thought it was going to ruin his day, but to tell the truth, we all got along so well, and laughed so much that day, it really didn't matter!
We drove around the North York Moors, with Don and Jean pointing out various places they knew, until we came to a little wooded picnic area in Grosmont. There used to be a lot of picnic tables in this spot, but today there was only one, however, it was empty so we availed ourselves of Jean's generous picnic lunch, and thermos of hot tea and had a nice little break and snacks. Here a href="https://muffangel.tripod.com/db2000/db23A.jpg"> we all are posing together while I used the automatic timer on my camera. And here a shot of Margaret alone that I took in hopes it would be a contender for her Christmas card photo list.
Don got a picture of Margaret and yours truly, and we cleaned up everything, piled back in the car and drove off to Whitby Town. It was good to be back here... being my favourite town in the entire world... and here it is, Whitby! We parked in the car-park and met up with some lovely collie dogs who were also walking near the harbour. The dog on the lead is named Robbie (or Robert) and we kept running into Robbie all thru the town after this meeting. And this is my My Whitby Harbour...isn't it just stunning? Can't you just smell that salt sea air?
We of course had to climb the 199 steps up to St. Mary's Church and what a view looking back down the steps onto the harbour and town. It was tough going for the likes of yours truly, but these steps are special to me, and I eventually caught up with the rest of the gang at the top.
This is the spot, THE VERY SPOT where I hope Paul will bring my ashes when I am gone, and bury them in this earth at the top of these 199 steps in my Whitby Town.
When we came back down the steps, Paul wanted to check out a famous kipper shop at the foot of the hill called Fortune's - he'd read all about this place - and we'd even seen The Two Fat Ladies (from the television show on the Food Network) visit there once to get some of their world famous kippers for one of their dinner preparations. But alas, it was not to be...Fortune's closed promptly at 4 pm and we made it to their door at exactly 5 minutes too late and they'd locked up and gone home! Oh well, we'll have to try again on our next trip to Whitby!
We visited inside St. Mary's Church, and then ventured through the streets of Whitby to a fish and chips restaurant where we indulged big time! A wonderful ending to a very extraordinary and fun-filled day in the most wonderful town in all the world - Whitby!
The fog came in and out all day long...as you can see from the photographs...but it was thick at the end of the day as we slowly made our way back home, the long 2 hour drive back to our cottage in Cotherstone after dropping Don and Jean off in Skelton and saying our final farewells. Elkie sang to us when we came inside - she was so happy to see us all again! It was very hard saying goodbye to that little dog, and even harder saying goodbye to these two lovely people. I don't think two nicer folk exist on earth, and we thank them for a very wonderful day out in the North York Moors.
We arrived back at the cottage at around 8 pm, had a quiet evening watching telly, and off to bed at a reasonable time. Our day with Don and Jean had come and gone...hardly seems possible already...but we made some wonderful memories, and hopefully, the day will come when we will return to this nook of Yorkshire and be with them once again!
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