Happy Holiday

I seem to be very lucky with holidays. There's a certain amount you can guarantee by selecting a nice place to stay and picking your holiday companions wisely, but the rest is up in the air.  Will the weather be awful? Will the cottage look nothing like the website pictures and be covered in dog hair? Will I forget to pack all my pants? Will the car break, stranding me in the middle of nowhere for a week? Will I blow up the cooker in the holiday cottage? (all of those have happened to me, although thankfully not all on the same holiday)

I went away last week with this lovely bunch:

L-R: Kim, Karen, Char, Heather, Ffion and moi.

Karen, Ffion and I work together and we decided, somewhat on a whim, to book a 5 day break and each bring along a friend.  We're all very similar in terms of likes and dislikes so I was fairly certain that I wouldn't hate the friends they brought with them.  And so it turned out!  Kim and Heather were both absolutely lovely and the six of us had a cracking time.  Lovely weather, lots of giggles and many jaunts around the countryside.  What more could you want?  Nothing went wrong!

Here's where we stayed:

Alas the amazing MG (Rita) is not mine.  She belongs to Karen.

An awful lot of gallivanting around Yorkshire was done. 

We went to Brimham Rocks:

And Nunnington Hall:

And Hutton le Hole (where I stepped in the most enormous amount of sheep crap):

And Thirsk, just to see James Herriot's house:

And we frolicked around a lot in the ruins of Fountains Abbey, seeing as it was practically on our doorstep:

Yes, that's Char falling off the back of a snail that toddlers ride on.  She then fell over on a silver dish thing as well.  FALLER!

But on a more relaxed note, we also loafed round the cottage drinking tea and coffee, eating a lot of cake and reading many, many books. We also played an awful lot of board games:

Articulate and 221b Baker Street to be precise.

Had a very civilized day out in Harrogate (where I bought lots of jumpers) and enjoyed delicious afternoon tea at Bettys:

And did a fair amount of charity shopping as well.  I saw these in the Oxfam bookshop in Ripon and went "YOICKS!", did the patented Alex shelf-sweep manouevre and scampered to the till with them.  Want to know the best bit?  In total, for eight 1950s Georgette Heyer hardbacks, it cost £6.75.

A perfect thing to take away from a perfect holiday.