All week we'd been planning to drive the 30 miles east to Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden but been put off by the weather forecasts, so with the forecast being better for Thursday today was the day. However, the wall of fog that hit us when we first looked out of the window didn't bode well for the day ahead. But, we decided to head over anyway as the risk was greater not to see the abbey than it was for the weather to be poor.
We left around 9:45am, our earliest start of the week, and arrived at Fountains Abbey just after 10:30am, so by 10:40am we were out of the car and on our way. My first impression was the size of the site, we've been to numerous ruins of abbeys before but nothing was on the scale of this site in it's entirety. There's not only the Abbey and Water Garden, but Fountains Hall, Fountains Mill, Porters Lodge, St Mary's Church and the Deer Park. It really is a full day out.
Unfortunately the breaks in the cloud never materialised, it was very grey and dull, and towards the end of the day it rained. Thankfully though it was literally right at the end of the day that it started to rain so our walk around the site wasn't spoilt much. As it was late afternoon it was also very dull which was unfortunate as the route that we took meant that the Abbey was our last port of call so our opportunity for some great photographs was very limited. That said, I did still manage to get plenty whilst dodging the rain.
Our visit to the park lasted over 5hrs, and if I'm being honest there was still a lot there that we didn't get to see. You really need a long summer's day to see everything that there is to see there. Of all the abbey ruins that we've been to, Fountains certainly had more sections of it that were relatively complete. One thing we did notice though was how little there was of a decorative element to the buildings; in many abbey's you see lots of carvings in the stone, but here there was little. Maybe a sign of the Cistercian way of life at this abbey?
We left around 4pm and headed back though Ripon and back to the cottage, where we stopped off for 5 minutes to drop some stuff off then headed into Helmsley where we dined at the Helmsley Spice. When we stayed in the same cottage in August we came to the restaurant after Donna had found some good reviews on the internet, and again the food didn't disappoint. We were both absolutely stuffed now, so just a 15 minute drive back to the cottage and chill out for the rest of the night. A great way to end our week.
More photos here.
We left around 9:45am, our earliest start of the week, and arrived at Fountains Abbey just after 10:30am, so by 10:40am we were out of the car and on our way. My first impression was the size of the site, we've been to numerous ruins of abbeys before but nothing was on the scale of this site in it's entirety. There's not only the Abbey and Water Garden, but Fountains Hall, Fountains Mill, Porters Lodge, St Mary's Church and the Deer Park. It really is a full day out.
Unfortunately the breaks in the cloud never materialised, it was very grey and dull, and towards the end of the day it rained. Thankfully though it was literally right at the end of the day that it started to rain so our walk around the site wasn't spoilt much. As it was late afternoon it was also very dull which was unfortunate as the route that we took meant that the Abbey was our last port of call so our opportunity for some great photographs was very limited. That said, I did still manage to get plenty whilst dodging the rain.
Our visit to the park lasted over 5hrs, and if I'm being honest there was still a lot there that we didn't get to see. You really need a long summer's day to see everything that there is to see there. Of all the abbey ruins that we've been to, Fountains certainly had more sections of it that were relatively complete. One thing we did notice though was how little there was of a decorative element to the buildings; in many abbey's you see lots of carvings in the stone, but here there was little. Maybe a sign of the Cistercian way of life at this abbey?
We left around 4pm and headed back though Ripon and back to the cottage, where we stopped off for 5 minutes to drop some stuff off then headed into Helmsley where we dined at the Helmsley Spice. When we stayed in the same cottage in August we came to the restaurant after Donna had found some good reviews on the internet, and again the food didn't disappoint. We were both absolutely stuffed now, so just a 15 minute drive back to the cottage and chill out for the rest of the night. A great way to end our week.
More photos here.
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