Knaresborough - click to enlarge, & browser Back button to return
If Freddie Mercury was still with us, A Day on the River, might have been a good companion album to Queen's wonderful early records: A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, but his very surname suggested life might end prematurely after burning so brightly for a relatively short time. After the winter we had, warm, sunny days still feel like a delightful surprise in northern England, and we are lucky to have so much natural and constructed beauty to explore in this largest county.
We had our General Election vote three weeks after everyone else due to the death of a UKIP candidate, but it is always a foregone conclusion in these parts - it's like having a tiny cut on your finger in an Olympic-sized swimming pool - my insignificant drop of blood red in a vast expanse of blue. Rural North Yorkshire will always be true blue Tory, which is totally alien to me ! No wonder I don't fit in round here.....
Luckily, Politics is an irrelevance to most people, most of the time; it's much more productive and enjoyable to have a session of rowing on the Nidd at Knaresborough, beneath the magnificent railway viaduct. Each member of our family had a bungled go with the oars, and you start to have greater respect for people like Steve Redgrave who has collected so many gold medals for dipping wood into water.
Knaresborough is now top of my list for places to live in North Yorkshire, because it has amazing things that you just don't get in our Wolds village location, like shops, cafes, boats, a castle, buses, cash dispensers, and most wonderful of all - easy rail connections to Harrogate, Leeds and York via the achingly lovely, high stone bridge. All I need is a lottery win to buy a black and white checked house above the small river of dreams.
9 comments:
It looks like a beautiful town.
Good to hear from you !
My ideal town is also one where there is some life and there are some interesting things to see and do. I have experienced village life and am pretty sure it would drive me nuts after 6 weeks.
The last time I rowed a boat was in Cornwall when I had been invited out for a drink by boat and on the way home the outboard failed. My companion was a competent oarsman but I felt that I should share the work and so took over the oars. He very soon asked for them back. And I had thought I was doing so well, too...
I lounged in the stern for the rest of our journey up the estuary in gathering darkness. That was the first time I had seen luminescence in the sea: each oar stroke left a glowing trail in the water.
I don't know Knaresborough. Perhaps we'll get there on our next foray north.
I like the sound of the glowing trail, SilverTiger.
I never made it there when I lived in the UK, and I think it was because I focused on visiting the larger cities since I was going to be there for such a short time. I think I'll plan a trip that incorporates more of the towns and smaller cities next time--there's something that makes all of them unique, even without checked houses.
Sometimes the smaller places can offer the greater charm.
Knaresborough looks delightful, never been there.
Hope you make it one day, Vinogirl.
Me too :)
Post a Comment