I should have been born in North Yorkshire, rather than South – it’s much nicer!

We are practising our steam train photography. One thing we have realised is that they are unpredictable – we didn’t know all this steam would come straight at us!

Colin has been at the long exposures again! We can’t remember where it is, will need to think about it.

This would look better with a train, we feel!

We came upon this by chance – we were driving along in miserable weather, and signs were up everywhere to say that we were on the route, so we decided to wait. TBH there were more support cars than cyclists, but everyone had a good time – lots of police motorcyclists out, pretending to be working but really just hooning around.

This was it – less than 100 riders, I’d guess. All the towns and villages on the route were decorated with yellow and blue bunting, Yorkshire flags and bikes painted blue and yellow. They say 2 million spectators turned out, but how do they know? The population of Yorkshire is 5 million, so that would be a very high percentage.

The weather is finally warming up.

There seem to be quite a few pubs around with this name. I have a rude remark here, but have decided not to write it down.

You can see where the stream comes out from underground at the cove, and this is where I dropped my jacket in the water. Just having come out of the cave, the water was very clean, and all I had to do was dry it. Lucky! That white path is the Pennine Way.

Lots of nice little villages around.

Blind Jack was a pioneering road builder and civil engineer in the 18th century. How could he do that if he was blind?

Some of the sights of Knaresborough.

The most famous sight of Knaresborough. The townspeople didn’t want it built, saying it would ruin the beauty of the town!

Turned out they were wrong! I was a bit miffed to find that you can’t really walk by the river, as it’s completely built up with housing. They advertise walking along the river to the House in the Rock,..

But when you get there, having walked mainly through a housing estate, it turns out it’s a private home, and this is all you can see!

There is also a castle, but we failed to get any decent photos due to it being too sunny. Got this instead!

For those who don’t know what a Yorkshire flag looks like. It’s the first time I have seen it!

We did have a nice breakfast though, at a nice riverside cafe.

The famous Ingleton Waterfall Trail – though I hadn’t heard of it until two days before we went. 4.5 miles, up one river valley, across some farmland, and down another river valley, with lots of waterfalls along the way. Thankfully, there was an ice cream van half way, we needed the energy! Colin loves his waterfalls – it’s that flowing water again. I don’t usually bother to get my camera out, he is much better than me.

Not a swing bridge!

The money tree – the idea is to hammer coins in with a handy rock. The tree is full, so there are the supplementary branches underneath, filling up nicely…

We have seen a few of these around Yorkshire. It’s like cairns in NZ I suppose.

Another viaduct!

Another steam train! A good plume, fully enclosed within the picture.

As I said, they are unpredictable. You wait ages, and they come in backwards! This is because they don’t have a turntable, so can’t turn it around – they unhitch, go down the line and over the points, come back up the other track, over more points, reverse up and hitch it on to the other end of the train. So, it went out forwards, but impossible to photograph from the front as sun was directly overhead, though this didn’t stop most people – they will have very black pictures. Ah well!

Harrogate is the posh end of Yorkshire, very prosperous and busy.

That’s a pretty fancy shopping mall, complete with ‘Bridge of Sighs’.

We were staying on the Bolton Abbey Estate, which is owned by the Cavendish family, which also owns Chatsworth. It’s a lovely spot – this was a nice 20 minute woodland walk from our caravan. The Barden Bridge is also along the Wharfe here.

So, that was North Yorkshire. We have no typical Yorkshire Dales photos, that is the dry stone walls with the patchwork fields, due to awful thick, dirty air. It must be common, as even some of the postcards on sale had it.

We have now moved on to Bury, and guess what, that is a railway line beside the campsite, so more opportunity to practice steam train shots! We are going to Manchester tomorrow, where the forecast is rain., Let’s hope it’s wrong!