The Dales

Our hosts Catherine and Aaron took us for an all day drive into the Yorkshire Dales.

The red flag was raised for live firing at an Army shooting range.  They had shooting ranges for all kinds of weapons, including tanks.

It was mostly gloomy clouds but occasionally the sun would peek through.

There are sheep everywhere, often in the road. In Australia when you see sheep they are mostly Merino. Here they are all sorts of different breeds. Usually you get photos of the front end, here the back end.

Some wool.

Thistles.

There must be thousands of miles of stone walls like this throughout England. Imagine the effort over the centuries to build and maintain these walls.

The red trucks taken from the car window as we whizzed past.

A church that had been converted into a house. Catherine had read about the church in a book and had eventually found it. The front door was was open and she managed to get inside to take a look at the place which she said was a fabulous conversion.

While Catherine was inside the conversion, we stood outside and looked at the view and this duplex. The right hand side part was for sale. 

The clouds were magnificent at times and moved through very quickly. You get the sense that this is a wild and woolly place. Winters must be very hard, the sun gets up at 9 am and goes down at 3 pm.

It is all very deserted with the occasional village or group of farm buildings.

If you watched 'All Creatures Great and Small' you probably saw countryside like this since much of the series was shot in this area.

This is a famous view and as Catherine said, 'I can show you the holes where the professional photographers put their tripods'.

I liked the zigzag path and the straight wall.

It's incredibly beautiful up there and all you can do is just take more and more photos. The weather is very variable so you would never know what to expect when you get up there.