Saturday, September 10, 2022

Week 2: Maidstone to Staveley, Lake District, England

All photos for this trip can be found in our
2022 England/Scotland Photo Album
Look for the "Week 2" tag for photos added this week.

Our general travel route for this week ...
Friday morning we checked out of the Black Horse Inn. We decided we'd drive back into Maidstone and pick up a couple of lattes, for the road, at the downtown Starbucks. Little did we know it is located in a restricted driving zone so we just skirted the edge of downtown and continued on our way "sans coffee". Our travels today took us north into county Norfolk. Later on the M25 motorway we took an exit into a rest area to get some gas. Well, the Shell station had a Starbucks self-help counter which we thought was a bit of a bonus so made ourselves a couple of lattes. WOW... talk about absolutely awful tasting coffee. Well, that was a bust. BUT... as we were leaving the rest stop we spotted a large Starbucks "drive-thru" sign so we turned into that area of the rest stop. We thought we'd park and walk in to get the lattes. Once we got the car parked and the first lattes ditched, we realiaed there were actually several Starbucks outlets at the rest stop. We counted 3 standalone Starbucks outlets along with 3 more food outlets with the same self-serve counters as the Shell station had. This is a large motorway rest stop and it was pretty packed with people. We went to one of the "real" Starbucks and picked up what we were looking for. Much better :-).

We stopped for a brief rest in the small town of Swaffham; parked the car and wandered along the main street stopping in a small pub for a very refreshing lime and soda drink. Next door is a small museum where we noticed a sign for the "Ben Emmerson" room. A possible relative?

Leaving Swaffham, we continued north towards Toftrees where, in the All Saints Churchyard cemetery, we hoped to find several Emmerson graves going back to 3rd -5th Great Grandparents. It was a bit tricky finding the small church but eventually we found it up a narrow lane. Just as we got out of the car a woman happened to drive by and stopped asking what we were up to. Turns out she has been doing research on the families buried there and has been focusing on "The Emmersons". WOW, what are the chances we would meet at that exact moment? Mona showed us where the Emmerson graves were and told us stories she had learned about the families. Later she invited us to her house where we met her partner, Steve, and they showed us more info on the studies they have done. Wonderful afternoon.

Since Mona said she had much information she would provide later we didn't take many photos but we did find an interesting web artcle on Norfolk churches featuring the All Saints Toftrees Church. This article includes an excellent photo of the headstone for William and Sarah Emmerson. William died in 1832. Sarah died in 1863. They are Brian's 3rd-Great Grandparents.

Leaving Mona's place we headed west to King's Lynn to The Lodge, our home for the next two nights. After getting checked in, we walked across the street to the Stuart Hotel restaurant for a rather substandard dinner of curry for Kris and a burger for Brian. Meh! To finish off the evening we walked up the street to the Lord Napier, a popular little bar, for a glass of wine and a Guinness.

Saturday, after an excellent breakfast at The Lodege, we decided to just veg out around King's Lynn for the day. It was a short walk through a large well-kept park into the town centre. We found a Starbucks then, as we were running a bit short of some clean clothes, we did a bit of shopping in Primark and Marks &. Spencer. Nice downtown pedestrian mall. Afterwards we walked over and did a brief tour of the King's Lynn Minster. Beautiful building although at this time it was being cleaned and dried out after a flood a couple of months ago.
We walked down to the river and along the levee for a bit stopping at the Marriott outdoor patio for a refreshing soda and lime before heading back to The Lodge. While at the patio we chatted with the waitress about the church being flooded. She said it is quite common to get some water in their restaurant because the river is a tidal river and at certain times of year they get a couple of inches. On the way back to The Lodge, we sptted a marking on a street wall...
... it was about waist high so that must have been a good one. We were abour a block further up the road than the church.

For dinner we walked a short distance to an Indian restaurant, the Spice Inn. Excellent!

Sunday, after anoter excellent breakfast, we continued our travels north to York where we checked into The Apple House for our two night stay. The drive through Norfolk and Yorkshire was quite uneventful with the scenery being pretty well limited to flat, flat, flat farmlands. We thought we might see a lot of sheep but saw literally none along the way. We arrived in York late afternoon so after a short rest we went in search of a place for dinner. We ended up at another Indian place, Jorvik Spice, another excellent choice.

Monday, after breakfast, we took a bus into central York where the first stop was a Starbucks for the usual lattes. We then joined the crowds on the popular pedestrian walkways through the historic centre. We noticed lots of restaurants for later. On Shambles street we came across a couple of Harry Potter stores which were very popular with young and old.
Continuing around the historic centre we eventually made our way to the York Minster. The first entrance we came across was the gift shop which we went into. At the back of the gift shop were two doors leading into the Minster itself. They were actually "one way" from the Minster into the gift shop but one could easily simply walk through them to enter the Minster. We had not yet seen the front exterior so exited the gift shop and continued walking around the building. We found the main entrance and joined the queue to get in. The charge to get in was £12.50 each. Yikes, not used to having to pay to get into a church but in we go. Big disappointment. Well over half the interior was closed due to a scheduled funeral. We had a brief look around at what we could see and left feeling that we should have just snuck in through the gift shop. A bit of a rip-off if the truth were told.
Leaving the Minister we took a bus back to The Apple House for a rest. Later we took a bus back to the historic centre only to discover most of the restaurants we had seen earlier were either closed or closing or had limited menus. We finally found a pub with full menu so decided to give it a try. MISTAKE... the wine and Guinness at The Red Lion were fine but the food was utterly appalling. Kris tried a fish finger sandwich with salad. Three tiny pieces of deep fried fish slapped between two pieces of dried bread with no condiments; Brian tried sausages with mash. Three inedible tasteless sausages along with a slop of what might of been instant mashed potatoes but sure didn't taste anything like potatoes.

Tuesday, after breakfast, we continued north towards the Lake District. We stopped in Harrogate for a couple of Starbucks lattes and wandered a bit along their downtown pedestrian mall. We arrived in Staveley early afternoon, too early to register at the Eagle and Child Inn...
...so made our way over to Rebecca and Nick's house for an afternoon visit where we finally had a chance to meet Rebecca's daughter Bethany. Later we took a walk around the small village, stopping at the inn to check in while at it, then back to their place for a nice home cooked sausage casserole dinner.

Wednesday, after breakfast, we dropped over to Rebecca and Nick's place to coordinate meeting up at the Westmoreland County Show, a large agricultural county fair that Rebecca had bought tickets for. Rebecca, Nick, Bethany and Noah bundled into their van while we took a bus from Staveley to Kendal to catch the free shuttle to the fair grounds. If it was a race then we lost! Man, this is a huge county fair. We got off the bus right outside the entrance; went in and immediately headed for The Sheep area (the main thing Kris wanted to see).
While walking up the hill to the sheep section we contacted Rebecca to let her know we were in. We spent quite a while looking at the many different sheep breeds and watched, through the gaps in the crowd, a number of the judged events and handing out of ribbons and trophies. The "Fleeces Tent" showcased many fleeces and highlighted the winners of those.
Leaving the area we found a covered rest area with picnic tables which we shared with a young sheep farming family. The fellow told us that he is a 15th generation sheep farmer in the area. That must take the origins of his family as sheep farmers back into the 1400's. He had just won a Reserved Grand Champion for his Swaledale sheep. Pretty proud!

We connected with Rebecca, Nick and Noah but Bethany had gone walkabout in the fair grounds. They were off to find a bite to eat so we headed off into the central "shopping area" of the fair. This central area was set up as long rows of tent structures housing a large number of vendors selling a wide variety of goods from small crafts to household products to saunas to large agricultural equipment. It was a lot of fun checking out many of these stall especially in the large food hall tent where virtually every vendor had samples of their goods. Yum... who really needed to buy a lunch. We stopped at a self-serve milk shake vendor where, while in line Bethany appeared. We offered if she would like a milk shake but she declined having just finished one herself. She wandered off to enjoy some other part of the grounds. Our rhubarb/custard flavoured milk shake was refreshing although it sure tasted just like strawberry. It was essentially like flavoured milk, not thick and creamy as we would get at home.

For dinner Rebecca and Nick treated us at the Eagle and Child. The food and drink were really good!

Thursday, after breakfast, we connected with Rebecca and Nick and they took us. along with Noah and their dog Wookie, for a drive around the lake district. We drove north to Keswick, parked, and walked into the town centre where a market day was in full swing. We wandered along the pedestrian mall looking in the various stalls while the rain decided it was time to pay us a visit. We walked down to Lake Windermere stopping at Cafe Hope for some coffees, teas and scones along the way.
We had planned to stop in at Grasmere and Ambleside on the way home but it continued to rain a bit heavier than we'd like. That along with the fact that we didn't sleep all that well the night before caused us to suggest not parking and walking around but rather just head home for a nap. So Nick just drove us around those towns for a brief view and then we headed home. Nap time!

Later, we walked back over to their place to take some photos and to say goodbye to Bethany.
Then Rebecca, Nick, Noah and we walked back to the inn for our last dinner together for this trip. Food and drink were again excellent as was the "pub quiz" that is a regular Thursday night feature.

Time to say goodbye for now and to end this week of our trip.
Back to Week 1On to Week 3
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)