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Fat Rascals at Bettys WENSLEYDALE SHEEP(S) I thought you might like to read what I noted down about yesterday. Have you read James Herriot? The Yorkshire Dales are exceptional! Anyway, here was our day. We started at Jervaulx Abbey, one of the few privately owned Cistercian Abbeys in Britain. We visited this 11th century abbey ruin 8 years ago, but this time we took more time. The setting is incredible in this pastured land with grazing sheep and the visitors are few with an honesty box asking for donations. The incredible sense of stillness as one looks through the arched ruins out into the meadows with the sheep. The only other lookers at the time were two English couples, also dressed warmly for the day, who gave us the old saying, "Never cast a clout, till May is out." Clout stands for warm clothes. The point is that it was June and I was not wearing gloves and my hands were stuffed in my coat pocket. The weather warmed up as the day went on and we ventured a few more miles on a mission.
A tad later we went to the local church, which I just read tonight, might have remnants of the Abbey seen earlier in the day. I was not attending to the history so much while in the church as to the two older women keeping it open for us to see. One reminded me of my mother and the other my Aunt Bernice. As soon as I said we knew Tom and Margaret Watson, and of course Dr. Chris Watson, who was raised there, we were treated as locals. The chatter back and forth with these women when they were trying to decide what to tell us about the Watsons, the church, and the best road to the next dale was, well, priceless. We left the church to view the graveyard outside. The grass was kept short in the graveyard by the nibbling sheep. One black faced sheep was lying on one of the gravestones. Jack took its picture and then I tried to sit next to it. But, the sheep moved away. Then, as we left, the sheep came back to sit again comfortably on the same grave marker of an infant who lived for three days many years ago
We angled back to the car park and detoured at the ever so frequent sign of footpaths to somewhere. Within minutes one is walking down a hill surrounded by sheep, cows, pasture, and stone walls. It is unlike anywhere I have ever been. I am awed at the mountains in Switzerland and elsewhere but there is nothing to compare with the scale and beauty of the Yorkshire Dales for my eyes.
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