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We got back from our holiday yesterday afternoon. It always feels weird for the first few days after arriving home from a holiday. For the first time this year, I updated my blog while I was on holiday, via WAP on my mobile phone. However, I didn’t have a chance to do any more updates from Monday onwards, so here’s a summary of what we did during the last week of the holiday:

On Monday we went back to Goathland (known as Aidensfield in the TV drama Heartbeat). As the weather was much better than when we visited on the first Monday of the holiday, we were able to do quite a bit of walking around the village. There is a really nice cafe in the village and we visited it twice in one day – first for a mid-morning snack and secondly for a meal in the early evening. They do good milkshakes there too (I really do love milkshakes!), so in the morning I had a vanilla milkshake and in the evening I had a strawberry one. During this holiday, I have become addicted to scones with clotted cream and jam – they serve them in most of the tearooms and cafes in Yorkshire. When we went back to the cafe in the evening, all the tables indoors were occupied, so we sat in the garden outside to eat our sandwiches. A family on a nearby table had a dog which kept running around – it was so funny when the owners kept calling it back to their table, as the dog’s name was Music. For some reason, the thought of a dog being named Music made me want to laugh! Even stranger, whilst one of the people on the table was calling the dog Music, the person sitting next to him was calling the dog Misty!

On Tuesday we went to Thirsk to visit the World of James Herriot museum. James Herriot was an author who was also a veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire, and his books were all about life as a vet. He died in 1995 and his former house and veterinary surgery was converted into the museum.

On Wednesday we visited Sledmere House and Gardens. They were the best gardens I’d ever seen, so I took lots of photos. The house was really nice too, so it was well worth a visit.
On Thursday spent the day in York – we started off at the National Railway Museum, then we had lunch at a nearby bar. After that, we moved on to York Minster, where we visited the crypt and undercroft. We also visited Treasurer’s House and York Castle. We were very pleased as we had managed to visit a lot of places that day.

On Friday, our last full day, we went to Scarborough. We spent some time on the beach and we also went on an open-topped bus tour of the town. Afterwards we visited Peasholme Park.

I’ve uploaded my holiday photos and you can see them at my Flickr page.

The first week of our holiday has been quite rainy but luckily the second week has been better so far. On Friday we went to Whitby on a steam train but it was very cold and rainy so we didn’t stay long, although we had a meal and went on a bus tour around the town. Yesterday we spent the day at Dalby Forest and went on several nice walks. Today we had a more relaxed day and visited Nunnington Hall.

My new obsession is lavender. This morning we went to Yorkshire Lavender and had a nice lavender scone with cream and lavender jam. Then we walked around the lavender gardens and had a lavender ice cream. I also bought some lavender oils etc.

Yesterday we visited Eden Camp which is a second world war museum with different themed huts to look round. In the evening we had a nice meal at a Best Western hotel in Pickering town centre. Today we are visiting Castle Howard.

Our holiday has been good so far, if rather rainy. Today we visited Goathland village where the TV drama Heartbeat is filmed. We also had a snack in the tearoom and walked by the river. There seems to be a fault with my twitter account so i’ve given up on it for now and i’m updating my blog via my phone.

This will almost certainly be my last post before I go on holiday on Saturday. We are going to stay in a holiday cottage in Pickering, North Yorkshire for 2 weeks. Tomorrow evening when I get home from work, I will have to start packing my stuff. On Friday evening I am going out with some of my co-workers, as 2 of them are moving to a different department soon, so this will be their leaving party. We are planning to go for a meal at the Spice Lounge restaurant and some people will be going for drinks afterwards. I’ll be going straight home after the meal though, as I will need to be up at about 5am on Saturday morning for the holiday.

This week has been really dragging as I’m looking forward to my holiday so much. For example, today seemed like Thursday when it’s really only Wednesday.

Yesterday evening my sisters and my nieces came round to celebrate my Mum’s 60th birthday. We had some fish and chips, with some cream cakes for dessert. We also told Mum about the spa day coming up in September (see previous post). As it will probably be about a month until the spa day, I decided to buy my Mum a box of chocolates, so that she could have a present on her actual birthday as well. My sisters and nieces brought round birthday cards for Mum, and one of them was quite funny. On the front, it says: “That’s you – my super duper number one nana” alongside a cartoon picture of a woman. Then in large letters it says “My lovely nana”. The font was difficult to read, so at first glance Mum thought it said “That’s you – my super duper number one hand. My lovely hand”, because the “n” looked a bit like an “h” and the “a” looked like a “d”. We were all laughing about that!

During the evening, my Mum’s bosses from the Townhouse and their daughter came round to bring some presents.

It’s unlikely I’ll be able to post another update until after my holiday. I’ll be back on the 30th of August. However, I might still be able to update my Twitter site while I’m on holiday with brief updates on what I’m doing – depending on whether there is any mobile phone reception in Pickering.

On Tuesday, it will be my Mum’s 60th birthday. On Friday, she went to her office job for the very last time before retiring. However, she will still keep her other part-time job at the Townhouse. She worked at the office job for nearly 15 years, so it is like the end of an era. On her last day, Mum was given lots of nice presents by her co-workers, including a massive retirement cake (when I first saw it, I thought it looked a bit like a wedding cake!), a huge box of Thorntons chocolates, 2 bouquets of flowers, a lovely necklace and matching earrings, a framed photo of Mum being presented with her flowers, and several retirement cards.

I can hardly believe Mum is 60; it seems strange to think about it. For her birthday, my sisters and I are planning a spa day, and all 4 of us will go. I’ve never been to a spa before, so it will be a new experience. Our holiday will start this Saturday though, so we will book it for when we get back home.

Yesterday evening, I went to the weirdest barbecue of my life! It was organised by one of my Mum’s former co-workers from about 8 years ago, and the whole family were invited. There were no burgers, just a few sausages, kebabs (which I don’t like) and some pieces of bacon. There were some burger buns, but they all had butter in them so I couldn’t have one as I don’t like butter or margarine. As a side dish, there were some cold baked beans and baked potatoes, so I had some of those along with a couple of sausages. And that was it! There were no desserts or anything like that. We all came away from this barbecue still feeling starving hungry, so we had to get something else to eat when we arrived home! Even Mum and Terry were laughing, saying it was the weirdest barbecue they’d ever been to in their entire lives! Mum doesn’t like kebabs either, and Terry said he just hoped the sausages had been well cooked. To be honest, I was relieved that I woke up this morning, alive and well!

They were nice people (I’d never met any of them before), but their idea of a barbecue is very different from ours!

It’s now less than 2 weeks until our holiday! The weather has been good this week, so let’s hope it stays like that for the rest of the month.