It also featured visits to Hawes and Leyburn. To me Yorkshire has always been a strange county of contrasts.
There are wonderful landscapes in the Dales and the Moors, beautiful villages featured in television programmes like Heartbeat and Emmerdale, lovely coastline (Whitby is one of my favourites where I have taken some lovely photos of boats as the sun goes down) and some areas of stunning outstanding beauty.
Then as if to act as a foil, there's the other Yorkshire of dark Satanic Mills of glassworks and disused coal pits. Areas of filth and almost squalor. It's certainly a place of contrasts, a county that includes one of my favourite British cities in the shape of York and one of my least favourite in the shape of Leeds.
Over the next couple of days I will feature just some of the photographs taken of our trip. I hope you enjoy at least some of them.
I start today with our visit to Ripon and our visit the next day to Hawes, which is the second highest town in England. Not sure what the highest is because information boards in Hawes tell us it's the second highest but isn't going to spoil our awe and amazement of that fact by telling us what the highest is.
Our time away started with a 230 mile drive to Askrigg in the Yorkshire Dales. Up here they have strange things called hills. They also have real Yorkshire tea and not the stuff we have down south although I must point out that Norwich isn't in the south. Norwich is in fact north of Birmingham.
We had two stops on the way. The first was at a new farm shop in Lincolnshire for coffee and the second was in the city of Ripon. It's one of those places I assume I have been to before but soon realised I hadn't.
We had a hot meal at Wilfrid's tea rooms which are named after the patron saint of Ripon and then only had time for a whistle stop tour of the centre and the cathedral. In the market square was a very decorative shelter made out of iron. The plaque informed us that it had been made at Boulton and Paul in Norwich. In order to make you jealous I have included a photograph of my sausage and mash lunch which was piping hot.
We then drove on to our hotel for two nights in Askrigg. The next day we got a small minibus to Hawes.
Last time we were in Hawes many years ago it rained. This visit it rained and was cold as well. So not a great day. We went in three shops - two clothes and one gift - and there wasn't a single person in any of them. I really don't know how they survive. I doubt that any of them sold a single item that day but they still have to pay staff, heating and lighting etc.
Talking of which I'm absolutely disgusted that our nearest branch of Barclays Bank at Wymondham is closing - yet another example of local services being eroded. A few days ago I received a survey to fill in on how Barclays responded to my recent scam. I stated that the response via the telephone had been poor and confusing whereas the response from a face to face contact at Wymondham had been good and helpful.
That survey will be totally ignored because they are hell bent on closing local branches irrespective of how difficult this makes things for customers or how much more unpleasant the contacts are.
Then I received an e-mail from Anglian Water. Memo to such organisations: Please please don't insult our intelligence by telling us how much better value we will receive when you are putting our bills up.
This is nonsense marketing strategy. Anglian Water is raising its prices by over 11 per cent. "We want to make sure you get the best value for your money," they prattle. Well getting the best value for our money is not getting us to pay double figure price hikes.
Another thing, we heat our home sparingly. Usually just one or two rooms. On a cold day our heating and electricity runs out at over £10 pounds. That equates to over £300 a month which is obscene. Whinge over for now. Enjoy my first set of photographs from Yorkshire.