Tag: Yorkshire

Developing a Severe Case of Bathroom Envy at Castle Howard

Be prepared for a serious case of bathroom envy when you see these beautiful bathrooms at Castle Howard.

I must say I do like a nice bathroom. I’m not remotely a bath person – it’s showers all the way – but I really think there must be another me existing in a parallel universe who loves a good bath. How else can I explain the dreamy lust for luxury I get when I see a gorgeous picture of a bathroom. Especially if it’s got a full-drawn bath full of foamy bubbles. I imagine myself sinking into it, my book propped up alongside a candle and a glass of wine on one of those wooden rack things that stretch across the bath, relaxed and ready to soak and chill for an hour or two …

… then I remember I get bored in a bath after about a minute, the bubbles get in my eyes and up my nose, my book gets soggy, the candle goes out with the first splash and I’m not a particular fan of wine. Plus I’m very aware that I’m sitting in what is basically a big bowl of my own dirty water.

So the parallel universe theory is the only one that makes sense.

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Exploring Wharram Percy – Yorkshire’s village of the living dead

Wharram Percy is a long abandoned village in the beautiful Yorkshire Wolds. A few years ago scientists discovered a grisly past …

I’d never heard of Wharram Percy. At least not until I spotted a guide book for it in the English Heritage shop at Pickering Castle. A quick flick through – abandoned village, not too far away, a steep sometimes slippery track to get to it (so best visited on a dry sunny day like today), zombies – and I was sold. I was with the friend I’d visited the abandoned village of Tyneham with at Easter and he didn’t take much convincing to change our afternoon plans and head to Wharram Percy instead.

(And yes, I did say zombies, it wasn’t a typo)

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Exploring Castle Howard – Yorkshire’s fabulous historic home

From sculptors to suffragists, from boat rides to Brideshead Revisited, and from Pellegrini murals to pizza, Castle Howard has a bit of everything to make it a fabulous day out.

Whilst in Dorset at Easter a friend and I took out Historic Houses membership. Sitting that evening in our Premier Inn room we excitedly researched what other interesting places were covered by our membership. The big one that stood out was Castle Howard. It’s a bit of a great old English houses bucket list item. It’s somewhere neither of us had been, though we both wanted to visit. And it’s expensive.

And so we planned a trip to North Yorkshire. We looked at dates and timings and booked a Premier Inn in nearby Pickering for the Saturday evening. Fast forward a couple of months and it was almost time for our trip. I was doing some last minute checking and discovered … that although Castle Howard is part of the Historic Houses scheme, members still have to pay to visit. Eek!

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