rachel.blog

Tag: travelling

  • The Yorkshire Dales from the Settle-Carlisle Railway

    Yesterday we finally made the trip to Carlisle through the Yorkshire Dales on the Settle-Carlisle railway. I have been wanting to take this train journey ever since we arrived and I have Bill Bryson largely to blame. Here’s what he said about it in his book, Notes from a Small Island: The Settle-to-Carlisle line is…

  • A day out in Nottingham

    We had a superb day yesterday. Our hosts took us to see some of the sights in Nottingham the first of which was Wollaton Hall – an Elizabethan mansion completed in 1588 and since 1926, home to the city’s natural history museum. Natural history museums are always interesting places to visit, especially for children, but…

  • Viking poo

    The photo below is an exact replica of a 1000-year-old Viking poo found beneath the city of York, or Jorvik as the Vikings called it. This poo and real ones (not replicas) can be sampled (held rather than eaten) at the Archaeological Museum in York, called Dig. We took the children there today and it’s an…

  • Winter sports are the best

    We went to Newcastle for the afternoon. It started off badly: there was rain, the children wanted to go home and we had nothing planned other than to walk around in the rain for a couple of hours before going back to York. But then things changed. First we ran into someone famous: Then I…

  • Clifford’s Tower

    Finally, after almost all of November on my own, I have my husband back and I’m very happy about that. I have a lot of respect for single parents and for parents where one of the couple spends much of their time travelling. I will only be on my own for about a week this…

  • My fair citie of York

    I’m the first to acknowledge that spelling and grammar are not my strong points but before anyone corrects the spelling of ‘city’ in my post title please know that this is a direct quote from Kind Richard III. Evidently this is how the word city was spelt 500 years ago. You could easily argue that…

  • Quality of life in York

    People in York are shocked when I tell them how much I love living here. Why is that? There’s an assumption that life is better in New Zealand and Australia so I’m going to challenge that assumption with this blog post. Quality of life is partly subjective and so the things I love about York…

  • Knaresborough

    Today was a fabulous day. It was one of those days that was completely unplanned with the decision to go somewhere made at the last moment. This morning, on impulse, we caught the train to Knaresborough, a market town less than half an hour away. Knaresborough is a gorgeous and fascinating place and I thoroughly…

  • Cycling in York

      The ease with which we can cycle around York has surpassed all of my expectations. Perhaps this is because we have come from car-dependent Auckland where bicycles are not catered for very well, so I really didn’t expect much. In York, however, there are many completely off-road cycle paths like this one above which…