The end of the summer?

As August rushes to a rather damp and dismal close here in Saddleworth, we ask ourselves if this is all the summer we are getting. It has certainly been a bit of a washout so far. Yesterday was a bank holiday so, of course, after a moderately promising start it rained! My tomato plants, which are thriving nicely and producing quite a lot of fruit (fruit? or veg?) need some warmth now to ripen up the tomatoes. Otherwise we’ll be eating fried green tomatoes. So what we need now is a bit of an Indian summer. In the past we’ve had some nice Septembers and I would like this year to follow suit.

It’s no consolation to read that Galicia is expecting rain and lower temperatures today. I’ve even read a report that they have had more cloudy days that sunny but I bet it’s been better than here and that no-one has felt the need to put their heating on.

Not that we haven’t had some good days, however. Last weekend offspring number one and his wife came to stay for a few days. We had a long and sunny walk around the reservoir and later along the canal towpaths to the garden centre which was very good.

And then on Tuesday we went off on an excursion to Fountains Abbey near Ripon in Yorkshire. We went in two cars and managed variously to get lost, one load from following SatNav too faithfully and the other from following instinct and getting tangled up in the Leeds one-way system.

Still, we had a good day out and I can heartily recommend a visit to the remains of what King Henry VIII didn’t quite manage to destroy completely. There was a rather know-it-all chap selling tickets who had been confusing some Japanese tourists by saying odds and ends in Spanish to them. When he started on us I threatened to speak proper Spanish to him and ended up doing so, successfully settling his hash! He then settled down and advised us quite knowledgeably on which was our best route, although he wouldn’t allow the smallest member of our party to ride his bike around the place, another thing which annoyed us somewhat.

We set off on a bridle path which took us to the rather charming St Mary’s church with quite excellent stained glass windows, a well-preserved tiled floor which you were not allowed to stand on without putting on protective slippers and a spiral staircase which we all wanted to take home with us.

Leaving the church we admired the view in a straight line down towards Ripon Cathedral, too far distant to appear as more than a blur in my photo.

We went past the rather delightful Chorister’s House which we were disappointed to find is a private residence as we would have loved to sneak a look inside.

Eventually we made it into the very fine gardens, some of us taking a detour to see the “surprise view” from Ann Boleyn’s seat. She must have visited before her head was chopped off.

And finally we reached the abbey itself and spent ages exploring the ruins. My children had a trip down memory lane watching the youngest of our party – aged 8 and 6 – running around inventing games in the different rooms of the place, doing exactly what they had done the last time we visited there when they were also aged 8 and 6.

Tired but happy we settled down to tea and cakes in the cafe and then the obligatory visit to the SHOP. No museum visit is complete without this marketing exercise but we escaped without too much outlay. Don sabelotodo – the know-it-all – from the entrance found us there and asked us if we had had a good visit so we forgave him for being somewhat overbearing at the start of the day. And so we set off for home.

The SatNav followers switched it off on the way back and succeeded in taking a wrong turn in Ripon and ending up going miles out of our way on the Leeds ring road. Such fun!

Arriving home rather later than planned we finished the day with a fish and chip supper. All’s well that ends well.