Day 31 - Saturday May 20, 2017 - Harrogate

After breakfast, the plan is to head back down to Harrogate. On the way, we’ll pass Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, so we may or may not stop, depending on how visible it is from the A1 main road. Looking at the map, it appears to be an easy exit when heading south (as we will be) with an associated car park but it’s not clear how you get back on the A1 without a circuitous detour.

As Jenny only has a bath in her room and no shower, she opted to use our shower this morning. Our bathroom has obviously been modernised, whereas hers is very old-fashioned and chintzy. Luck of the draw….

We fortified ourselves with breakfast and then headed for home. It’s a gray and rainy day again that does nothing to encourage us to stop anywhere en route. Getting a photo of the Angel of the North, when heading south, proves a bit tricky as you’re rather too close to it and there are a lot of bushes along the roadside between you and it. However, we elect to make do with that and not stop. Probably much easier to get decent shots of it (from the car) when heading north and it’s across the other side of the motorway.

We stop in Ripon to visit Imogen and Andy and get a tour of Imogen’s ‘new’ house (and Andy’s ‘old’ house). Ewan, Evie and Dylan are all there, so we get to see them, albeit somewhat briefly. They’ve all grown considerably since we last saw them. We’ll see them all again tomorrow at lunch.

We head off to Scar House, taking the Pateley Bridge road out of Ripon, past Studley Roger. Scar House now has a small cafe, run apparently by the same people who run How Stean Gorge. As usual, it’s pretty blustery up there; the water level in the reservoir is pretty low so no water over the dam. After our sojourn to the middle of the dam, we stop in the cafe for drinks and cake, where the lady seemed please to see us, as business had been rather slow today.

We would have called at Emma’s on the way back, but she was not going to be home until later; likewise, Chloe was also not at home so those two house inspections will have to be tomorrow. However, we did get to see the outside of the terrace property in Harrogate that Imogen is buying for Jessica to live in; exchange of contracts and completion is supposed to happen this coming week. After checking in to the hotel (the Holiday Inn, where we’ve stayed before though it has now morphed in to a Crowne Plaza) we headed to Jenny’s to put the washing on, have a cup of coffee and sit in companionable silence as we each fiddle about on our iPads.

Curry night tonight but it appears that it will be just the three of us, as everyone else has other commitments; however, we’ll see everybody (16 of us) for lunch tomorrow at Bistrot Pierre.