Until a couple of years back, your satnav would claim you were several miles distant from your actual position when you drove past the sinister "golf balls" of the Menwith Hill tracking station. Why this paranoid measure was deemed neccessary by the Men In Black is anyone's guess, it's not as if the place is hard to find. As I watched the Garmin in Our Lad's Mini as we zoomed up the B6451, I was a bit disappointed to see that it wasn't insisiting we were on the A65. Maybe the CIA have been Obama-ised.
On our trip we stopped off at Ripley, a 'model' village built by the Ingilby family after the original was wiped out by plague. The Ingilbys still live in nearby Ripley Castle, which seems to be the venue for every single wedding in Yorkshire Life magazine. The village has a fantastically good butchers, Hutchinson's, which is where I picked up the half-dozen pies my colleagues in London now insist I bring back. The staff at Hutchinson's were everything you'd expect a Yorkshire butcher to be; red-faced, rotund, big grins and loud voices. As we entered, one of them was cutting up a pig with skill of a surgeon. "ALL FOR TOMORROW'S PIES" he boomed like Brian Blessed.
Apologies to any vegetarians for this picture. Unfortunately, the butcher was more camera shy than the pig. The pies were great, by the way.
4 comments:
aaah.....memories....
Did you go into the Royal Oak at Dacre? Good pint, good food in my time.
I never had a Ripley pie; anything from nearby Patelely Bridge would have been good - save, that is, any pitiful cellophane offering from the Spar shop!
Sadly no, time was a bit tight. We did manage a mochaccino in Ripley Castle cafe though!
Great photograph, I drove past that this morning. I also almost bought the jukebox that had been in the bowling alley at Menwith Hill a few years ago, it was for sale at a place called Aire Valley Leasure in Keighley... couldn't get it through the door though, and my wife wouldn't let me take the dining room window out to get it in the house. Big regret of mine that I never bought it though.
Cheers.
Hi Grooverider, thanks for dropping in.
Aire Valley Leisure are still trading - they might know where it is. I'm sure your wife would learn to love it!
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