St Michael graveyard

I always love old churchyards.

For your safety and comfort

I loved these upholstered cushions for kneeling in the church. So much more comfortable than the barely cushioned wooden kneelers I spent many uncomfortable hours of my childhood on.

Two windows at St Michael

St Michael and All Angels

Back to the Yorkshire Dales.

This 12th century church in the charmingly-named Hubberholme has an All Creatures Great and Small connection—the interior scenes for the wedding of the James Herriott character were filmed here—but it's a beautiful little church well worth a visit even if they'd never managed to squeeze a TV production crew inside it.

The author J.B. Priestley loved Hubberholme, and his ashes are buried in the churchyard.

I am actually back at Merton

The second week of the program started today, but this is the only picture I've taken at the college—the gates to the Fellows Garden on a perfect summer afternoon yesterday.

I have enough pictures from Yorkshire and more recent excursions to go through, and I think I've already photographed every square inch of Merton by now.

Sunday bird blogging

A rook perched on one of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge yesterday.

It's not a great picture, but at least I had a longer lens this year, so it's better than the tiny starlings I photographed there last year. At the time, I wrote, “I don't imagine I will ever get to post a picture of birds at Stonehenge again,” but I'll gladly make it a habit if I can.

Saturday reflections

It's surprising to me that it's only been two weeks since I took this picture—it feels like forever ago.

This is from the hot Sunday when I got lost in Oxford and at one point found myself in a tunnel underneath the Rewley swing bridge. It was kind of creepy actually, but the reflections were nice.

One more Yorkshire landscape

A last picture from the van as we drove through the Yorkshire Dales last weekend.

It's a little less "picturesque" maybe...

 ...but this is my favorite picture from Grassington: a side street off the main square, stone buildings, and a couple of bicycles.

More Grassington

I had a coffee and a scone at the Stripey Badger. Worth it just for the name, but the scone was also excellent.

Grassington

We took our midmorning break in this village in the Dales, which is now famous for starring as the fictional town of Darrowby in the latest TV version of All Creatures Great and Small, which has apparently done for the Yorkshire Dales what Outlander did for the Scottish Highlands. Apparently the producers picked Grassington because all they had to do was change the signs on the buildings and hide the cars and it would pass for the 1930's.

Over hill, over dale

A few pictures taken with my phone from the van as we drove through the national park.

The dales are a series of valleys nestled between hills of moorland in the Pennines, and 95% of the land in the park is privately owned. There are towns and villages and many, many farms, with fields of sheep bounded by dry-stone walls, and old stone barns.

I was expecting something wilder and more uninhabited, but what I got was beautiful and bucolic. Also, our lunch stop was at the Wensleydale Creamery, where they have a free tasting room: Wensleydale with cranberries or apricots or mango and ginger, cheddar with caramelized onions or pickled onions or chili. I didn't need lunch or dinner after sampling everything at least twice.

The journey from York to Oxford yesterday was long and frustrating; the heat has caused massive problems on the rail systems, and I ended up taking an Uber from Birmingham after my train to Oxford was cancelled and the next trains were repeatedly delayed. But I got here. I checked into my hotel, successfully retrieved my suitcase from storage, and was only twenty minutes late to dinner with a Merton friend. I'm moving into Merton this afternoon and will be happy to stay put for the next three weeks.