The train trip down from Inverness to Knaresborough was...interesting. The first leg, from Inverness to Edinburgh was easy enough; it was the second leg, from Edinburgh to York, that was the problem. Like that first trip from London to Edinburgh, the train was pretty full; unlike that one, however, this time I didn't manage to find a seat. According to a couple of locals who were among those of us who ended up stuck in the vestibule of the carriage, standing with our bags and trying to dodge people wandering down to the toilet, it's very unusual for the train to be so crowded, even at this time of year. Unusual or not, I ended up standing for an hour and a half, right next to the carriage toilet (which meant I had to shuffle my pack out of the way each time someone wanted to open the toilet door), along with around ten others (in that carriage - there were also people standing at the ends of other carriages, though I've no idea how many). The fun part came when they took the refreshment trolley down through us all, and we played sardines in corners with complete strangers so that the damn thing could get through. Not long after that, fortunately, a whole group of people got off. I still didn't get a seat, but I did get to half sit on a sort of shelf thing in the vestibule which is there for people to lean against.

Boy, was I glad to see York!! Once at York, all I had to do was cross to another platform and hop on a train to Knaresborough, which was then about a twenty minute trip. As you can imagine, by this stage I was pretty pooped and fed up with the whole train travel thing, so I was feeling fairly cynical about the next B&B's claim to be 'convenient to the train station'. In this, however, I was pleasantly surprised; the train pulled into Knaresborough, I hauled my bags up off the platform - and there it was. Gallon House B&B. Across the road and up a couple of houses - literally 30 seconds walk from the train station (I'd assumed all along that was an exaggeration, but they were right). If I'd been glad to see York, I was doubly so to see how short a walk I had to get to my final destination!

As a side note, Gallon House B&B was absolutely gorgeous. It's a little terrace house, set in a row of terrace houses, close to the banks of the River Nidd. My room was upstairs and had a marvellous view down the river and across to the ruins of Knaresborough Castle. There are only three guest rooms in the place and the hosts, husband and wife Rick and Sue, are very good at what they do. Rick met me at the door, carried one of my bags up for me, and showed me around; he even made me a cup of coffee and left it in the conservatory (fancy name for a nice little room with big picture windows, looking out over the river) for me, on a tray with biscuits. Breakfast each morning was divine but far more bountiful than I could manage in one sitting at any time of day (let alone first thing!). To start with, there was fresh fruit (strawberries and grapefruit every morning that I was there), muesli, cereal, dried apricots, fruit compote (that was what they called it - just looked like tinned fruit to me, but I'm probably missing a sublety there) and yoghurt (THE nicest yoghurt I've ever had, probably because according to the ingredients on the back of the tub it has cream mixed in with it). Then there's a choice of cooked breakfasts (I had bacon and eggs for the first two mornings, and a bacon muffin the third - the bacon, as you may have guessed, was pretty damn good), and they bring you out a little dish with what they call 'morning goods' on it (in English, this translates to a couple of pieces of toast, a croissant and an English muffin). I never finished everything - not even close - but boy did those breakfasts set me up for the day! My room, apart from its lovely view, also had a bay window with a window seat, which appealed to me instantly and was very comfortable.

Anyway, enough about the B&B - suffice to say, on the first day I did very little other than to relax there, read, and go to bed early.

On the Saturday, my first full day in Knaresborough, I was up and about fairly early, well-rested and ready to take in the sights. Knaresborough is a gorgeous town - just how you'd picture an English country town to be, with terraced houses and views of rolling hills in the distance. The River Nidd meanders along one boundary of the town, and the ruins of the castle are perched on a hill overlooking the rest. Because the town is built in a valley, you spend a lot of time walking up and down (if you ever get down to the river level, which I did, you face 90+ steps to get back up again to the main part of the township). Knaresborough has enough tourists that there are a couple of gift shops and no-one looks at you strangely if you wander around brandishing a camera; but not so many tourists that you feel innundated.

My first stop was Knaresborough Castle. This is set in a park, with lawns and flower beds and park benches, which seems to be open at any time. You can just wander in and look around without having to pay anything, and a lot of people seemed to be doing just that. To go into the museum (small, but pretty good) or into the keep (which is pretty much the only part of the castle which remains), you pay a couple of pounds; however, none of this opens until 10:30. As I was there earlier, I wandered around taking some photos then, much to my surprise, looked over and saw a lady dressed kind of like a medieval knight in chain mail, pushing a bicycle with a little trailer attached, with several cat cages in the trailer and a raven perched on top.

(Yes, I questioned my sanity for a moment there, too.)

It turns out that the cat cages contained two more ravens, and that these three birds belong to Knaresborough Castle. They were being brought out and put on display for visitors (probably because it was a long weekend Saturday, I assume - today (Monday) is the August Bank Holiday), which I learned from a handwritten sign which the raven-lady propped up against a wall. She had the ravens on long strings (traces? Is that what you call them?), and did not seem inclined to interacted with her fascinated audience at all (there were quite a few of us there by then, watching her and the birds). Instead, she offered the ravens water and food, then settled in to chat to them. She told one she knew he didn't like the thing around his leg, but that he'd have to put up with it - that was the rule. She sat beside another and asked it why it was looking so unhappy (I've got to admit, it did look a bit downcast) - then (God's honest truth) she read to it for a while (she had a little book which I'm assuming she'd brought for herself to read, but she was reading out loud to the raven - I guess if you're soothing an upset  bird, the tone matters more than the words themselves?). I sat and watched for a while, interested in the birds and thoroughly enjoying their keeper (she was like the crazy cat lady of the avian world), and taking a heap of photos of the ravens (one of them kept stealing things and hiding them - it was hilarious).

Eventually, though, I figured I couldn't stay any longer and headed over to the gift shop/visitor centre to buy a ticket. Luckily, I was just in time for one of the tours, so I didn't have to hang around waiting. The tour only lasts 30 minutes (there's not that much remaining of the castle, really) but was quite interesting - we went down into the dungeon, upstairs into what would have once been the king's audience chamber, and through the sallyport (a secret escape tunnel running under the castle grounds). I didn't take all that many photos of the interior, because my camera battery was about to give up the ghost and there wasn't time to stop and change it. After the tour, I whizzed through the museum (it was pretty small) and then headed off.

By this stage, it was pushing lunch time, so I wandered into Knaresborough's town centre and stumbled across a little lolly shop (that was a hardship to visit, I tell you) with the Lavender Tea Rooms above it. After buying some edible souvenirs, I headed up to the tea rooms for lunch (including the obligatory scone with jam and cream), then hit the road again on my way to Mother Shipton's Cave.

Mother Shipton's Cave lies within a privately owned park which runs along the River Nidd. It includes a couple of playgrounds, picnic tables and a nice path to stroll along, then the Cave is at the other end of the park, along with the Petrifying Well (which isn't a well at all, but rather a rocky outcrop which the mineral-rich water spills over and into a pool below). The Petrifying Wall was intriguing; there are two bumps which are apparently a pair of hats left in 1853 and never reclaimed, and ropes with an assortment of items dangling from them and slowly turning to stone. Most of these were little teddy bears (for the obvious reason that the owners put them out to mineralise/petrify, then sell them in the gift shop) but there were also other things - a cricket bag, a jester's hat, a lobster (fake, I'm assuming, though I couldn't swear to it). Next to the Petrifying Well, there's a little wishing well that you put your hand in and make a wish (if you can read the sign explaining the traditional procedure, that is; the inattentive or just plain dopey chuck coins in instead), and the cave where Mother Shipton was born (not in and of itself terribly exciting - it's basically just a cave with a statue of an old hag figure in one corner).

On my way out, I stopped at the ever-present giftshop and bought myself a mineralised teddy bear; it's very cool, though smells rather like something from the sea (a chunk of coral, maybe, or something that's been soaking in seawater for a very long time). I hope I don't have any trouble with customs when I bring it back - there's nothing harmful about it, but the smell might be enough to make them wary, if they notice.

After that, I strolled slowly back through Knaresborough, dumped my stuff back in my room, then headed out again for dinner (fish and chips).

The next day, Sunday, I took a day trip across to Fountains Abbey. This was a bit more complicated than anticipated (the train I was going to catch wasn't running - no trains on Sunday morning until 11:49 - but I eventually managed to find a bus instead), but I still made it there right as admissions opened.

Fountains Abbey was created by a monastic order in the 13th century (I think - dates are beginning to blur together a bit). Next to it, there are some beautiful gardens which once belonged to a neighbouring property (Studley Royal), until the property owner bought the land the Abbey was on (basically as a pretty extension to his garden - when you're rich enough to afford an army of gardeners, taking on a ruined abbey and its grounds is obviously little more than child's play). The entire site is now owned by the National Trust. One thing which continually amazes me here is that people take dogs everywhere. I've never specifically checked, but I bet you anything you like that dogs aren't allowed at Port Arthur (except guide dogs, of course). In England, it;s not a problem - dogs on leads are allowed pretty much anywhere. There was a gorgeous adolescent labrador on the train down from Edinburgh to York (I was dying to go say hello, but couldn't wander off down the aisle with my pack in tow), and there were plenty of dogs at Fountains Abbey. A lot of people seemed to  be there for a family day out, with kids, dogs and picnic blankets, and they certainly had a nice day for it (blue sky! sunshine! I'd almost forgotten what they looked like).

I started at the Abbey end of the site. There was a free guided tour which I initially joined, but I eased myself out of the crowd and bolted at the first possible opportunity. Though very earnest, the lady leading the tour was the most boring guide I've yet come across. She took ten minutes (of excruciating detail and scholarly exactitude) to convey these simple facts: Fountains Abbey was founded by a group of monks who broke away from the Benedictine Order, feeling that that order had become to worldly and wanting to go back to a more austere monastic existence. Struggling to make it on their own, they approached the Cistercine Order, which was formed in France for similar reasons, and soon became Cistercine monks.

That's it. That's what it took her ten minutes to tell us. The tour was supposed to last for an hour and a quarter and I couldn't take it; luckily, she had quite a large group so I could abandon ship without being too conspicuous. If there had only been a few of us, I'd've had to stick it out. Amongst the group were a couple of kids - aged maybe 8 and 10 - and I felt immensely sorry for them; if I was bored within the first ten minutes, I bet they were fed up within the first two!

So what I did after that was to have a really good wander around the ruins, taking photos and exploring. The abbey was - still is, really - a huge, impressive complex (more elaborate and impressive than I would have thought a simple order of monks would have needed!). It was left to fall to ruin in the time of Henry VIII (who of course brought in Protestantism and dissolved the monasteries because they were Catholic) but is in fairly good condition (though some of the outlying buildings - storage rooms and whatnot - aren't doing so well; other buildings in the area have since been made of stone from the abbey complex, and I'm assuming it was from those sorts of buildings that the plundering first took place).

After finishing at the abbey, I walked along a little river, though more parkland, to reach the Studley Royal end of the world. The scale of the gardens was amazing - big, sweeping lawns, ponds (though the word 'pond' is entirely too small-sounding), a pair of swans with six grown-up cygnets (as big as mum and dad, but still grey rather than white) and a heap of ducks, and even a couple of fake temples (eg, the Temple of Piety - looking like a traditional ancient Greek temple with columns but built during the 18th century  just 'cos the lord who owned the garden thought it looked good). I had lunch at the tearooms in the gardens, paused to take photos of the swans and ducks (there were families feeding the birds on the water, so I got some great close ups), then headed off again to see St Mary's Church (built on the edge of the old estate during the 19th century) and walk half a mile or so back to the visitors' centre where I came in. Then it was back on the bus for the trip back to Knaresborough (which involves a bus from Fountans Abbey to Ripon, then a bus from Ripon to Harrogate, then a third and final bus from Harrogate to Knaresborough). I'd hoped to have some time to look around Harrogate on the way back from Fountains Abbey, but unfortunately (because it was Sunday) the buses and trains weren't running much past six o'clock and there just wasn't time. I kicked myself for not checking this in advance; I could've done Knaresborough on the Sunday, and tackled Harrogate and Fountains Abbey on the Saturday, when public transport was better.

Dinner that evening was Subway eaten in my bedroom while I re-packed my stuff (funny how it always seems to need to be rearranged after a couple of days). I couldn't believe how fast my time in Knaresborough had gone; I'm going to have to go back, not so much to explore Knaresborough itself (I pretty much knocked over the main sites in the one day) but to use it as a base to explore the surrounding area. If/when I do go again, I'll be heading back to Gallon House if possible - couldn't think of a nicer place to stay.

Anyway, that nearly brings us up to date - this morning, I caught a train from Knaresborough to York, then another from York to London; both trips went smoothly and with no major hassles. I arrived here in London too late to do the British Museum as I'd planned (the train to London was held up), so I settled myself in to get the Inverness blog done, then wandered down into London itself to get some dinner. I ended up going to see a musical, buying a half price ticket from a last-minute outlet. The one I saw was called 'Blood Brothers'; it's the story of twin brothers separated at birth, one to be raised by their desperately poor biological mother and the other given away to be raised by a wealthy (but unstable) woman who's unable to have children of her own. I won't bore you with a long description of the plot, but suffice to say things do not end well for the unfortunate twins. Indeed, the play begins with them lying dead on the stage, then regresses to the time before they were born, when their mother made the desperate decision to give one of them up. The plot works forward in time, heading towards that point where the two young men are lying dead - but it's so very well done that you find yourself desperately hoping that something will intervene and they won't end up there after all.

And that's everything! Up to date at last, and I really should be heading off to bed, because it's now past midnight and I have a long day planned for tomorrow.