The British Invasion: Highclere Castle, James Herriot, the Dales and Scotland

After spending a restful night in Cantebury, we decided to head west to about an hour south of Oxford, to tour the beautiful Highclere Castle... this is the amazing home of the 14th Earl of Carnarvon, his wife and son... also the home of that truly British television hit... you recognize it?  You guessed it,  Downton Abbey.  Quite a sweet pad in my opinion.

Though, obviously, quite a castle of a home... there were family pictures throughout complete in cheezy $3.99 frames... and one of the bedrooms on the tour was obviously THE bedroom... complete with messy nightstand, pens, pencils, etc... definitely gave it a homey vibe that you wouldn't anticipate from the outside!

Of course when visiting a castle in England... you must have tea and cakes... yum!

Here's us... considering making an offer on the place... though we ultimately decided not to as I didn't want to have to mow all that lawn!

We camped that night south of Oxford at a small farm... quite uneventful.

The next day, we decided to push a little further north in an effort to get to some of the rural Northern England that we really wanted to check out.  Our first destination was Thirsk... home of the James Alfred Wight (aka James Herriot) museum.  If you're not familiar with Mr. Wight.. he was a large and small animal veterinarian and author of the All Creatures Great and Small books that chronicle the life of a young vet in the Dales of England working with farm animals.  Visiting his museum... you really do appreciate his life and work all the more.  Here's us doing something all vets in this area must become familiar with:

 

Ewww... we could use a handwashing after the museum... kidding moms and grandmas!

Harmony and Hadden on set at the James Herriot museum!

Here is a picture of the church in Thirsk... just to give you an idea of the flavor of the little town... very sweet.  After checking out the museum, we decided to go check out the real Yorkshire Dales... the place that James Herriot made famous to us... a great and special place in Northern England (a national park in fact), that is very agricultural, with flowing hills, sheep, quaint villages... I'd say the type of place that most Americans would think of when they think of England.  As we were cruising out there... the GPS got a little confused by the new road construction that had been going on.. and I managed to miss some crucial turns... but we decided to go on anyway... we knew the general direction and the town that we thought we wanted to go to... Leyburn.  Anyway... as we were driving these spectacular roads, we realized from painting on the road... and little yellow bicycle signs that we were actually driving on the route of the part of the Tour de France that just took place here in England.  We followed this route for a long time, until finally... so impressed with the scenery... I said... "the next camp sign I see... we're stopping"... sure enough I saw a camp sign and we entered a fairly long private road... which... not quite sure if we were trespassing or not... we kept going.  Luckily... what a beautiful spot we found... privately owned by the family that owned the classic Dales farm.  In fact... this was a farm that was featured on the "All creatures great and small" TV show... so... we'd arrived.  Very nice people... had the run of the fields, where the few fellow campers were running their dogs.  Heather and I even took the public footpath up into town and had a beer at the pub!  Here are some pics:

Entrance to the camping place at in the Yorkshire Dales

We camped in the upper pasture.. with about 8 other vehicles...! Decent view eh?

Kiddies down in the lower pasture in front of the typical Dales pasture barn

This is George the Goose.  According to the farm owners... he is over 25 years old!  They'd all forgotten actually.  He has a bad leg which causes him to limp a bit... but he likes bread... took a little chunk out of Hadden when he tried to get him to eat out of his hand.  Notice the mirror... I guess George gets a little lonely... his partner was killed 15 years ago.

Here was the view of the Dales that we had waking up this morning!

 

Apparently the Tour de France went right through downtown Leyburn... (click on the picture to enlarge)... the locals referred to it as the Tour de Sheep!

Waking up in the Dales was great.  After a nice breakfast of fresh scones and tea, we made our way to Leyburn to do a little shopping.  We bought some meat pies from the baker (and more yummy scones)... did a little tourist shopping... then back in the RV with our hearts set on Scotland!  After about 3.5 hours in the car... we made it.  We came up through Glasgow and followed the shores of beautiful Loch Lomond... and now we're safely installed at a small RV campground on the north end.  Actually this campground is a way-point for the West Highland Trail which is an overland route from Glasgow to the Fort William.  It's about 150 km.  So... there are lots of hikers here now... all real tired.  Anyway... we're stoked to have the internet... we're all alive and doing great!  Tomorrow, I think we're going to try to make it to the Isle of Skye!  We'll have more pics up if we have internet!

Hiking part of the West Highland Trail... from the campsite into the small town nearby.  The kids are getting "grounded" with barefeet.