Skipton, Tuesday, 23rd July

I’m finally getting round to getting the next round of my trip journey written up as I had a computer issue – wherein the disk utility determined that there was no access to the internal hard drive. Thankfully, when I got home yesterday (7th Aug), and took it to an Apple shop, that they determined it wasn’t a hard drive failure but rather a faulty cable. So it was an easier fix and less expensive.

As my trip to Manchester was shorter – and rainy – the time I got to wander around was less, so I’ve added it to this post as well. Hopefully the next time I get over, I’ll try and spend a bit more time exploring the city.

I took the train up to Skipton from Epsom, which was a multiple-part trip, carrying luggage around each section through a combination of National Rail trains and Underground trains connections. I got into Skipton and got settled at the guesthouse and set out to exploring the beautiful town. I travelled up by train to Skipton today. One of the things that drew me to Skipton was the scenery seen in Last Tango in Halifax. The stone and brick houses, along with the scenery around the canals were lovely.

When I was initially doing some research in to what things to see and do, one of the things that struck my interest was Skipton Castle, a medieval castle that’s over 900 years old, and is one of the best preserved in England. The right side of the castle as you approach, is actually still currently inhabited, whilst the sections on the left side are open to the public. as there was so much information to absorb about the castle, I included the link to the Skipton Castle’s website, which has a lot of information available. The Chapel of St. John the evangelist (in the third picture) was built in the 13th century.

Afterwards, I wandered down, poking through a couple shops before heading down to the canal, where there were short canal boat tours, Pennine Boat Tours, for £3. The tour guide gave us a bit of history of the use of the canals in the area, distances covered with the Leeds and Liverpool Canals. You could get a small bag of duck / swan food for 50p to throw out to the water fowl. There were a few young swans and ducks that were still grey in colour (picture five below).

After my wandering around I headed to the Castle Inn Pub for a wonderful feed of Roast Beef dinner with Yorkshire pudding & vegetables. Then I got caught out in the rain, running much of the way back to the guest house, occasionally darting under the eaves of shops as I went. My clothes were rather soaked by the time I got back, but at least I could put them on a radiator to dry as I took a lovely bath. The next morning, I took another wander through the town, and found a market set up along High Street and I browsed through a few stalls before heading back, signing out and heading to the train station to head on to Manchester via Leeds. I thought I might get to Halifax to do some exploring but that will have to wait until next time as the train station in Halifax doesn’t have a place that I could store my suitcase as I roamed about.

Manchester, Wednesday, 24th July
I didn’t have much of a chance to do a lot of wandering around Manchester, but one of the key things I wanted to see was the Manchester Town Hall, of which I’d also seen in Last Tango in Halifax (first scene of the first episode). I loved the architecture of the building, inside and out, and if you’ve gotten this far, you’ll notice I have a thing for arches, doorways and bridges, so you’ll see that in the following pictures. Alas, I wasn’t there in time (which was about 1pm, I believe) for the Town Hall Tour, which is something I would have enjoyed I think, judging by the architecture of the building. I’m beginning to think that my list of things to do next time is getting longer by the day.

I ventured around the town for a walk, heading over to Canal Street for a drink and a chat with a couple locals before heading back to the hostel to relax for a while and get some rest before heading up to Edinburgh the next day.