Outer York

This post is about two things just outside of York that you can visit.

We discovered both by accident. We saw the mausoleum for Castle Howard as we drove past, and went to investigate, and when leaving York, we saw the brown sign for Kirkham Priory, and figured we should go check it out.

Castle Howard is a huge building with an expansive gardens. Now, it's prohibitively expensive, we didn't realise this until we got there. It's £19 per adult. You need a good few hours here, and it's not a great place for kids, as there's not much for them to do and keep them occupied. The gardens are beautiful, and there's plenty of interesting bits in them. There's a pond, a temple (that you can't go inside of) a woodland area with plenty of statues and art to look at, as well as a cafe by the boathouse, with plenty of ducks to fed and talk to.

There was a thick mist when we arrived, which gave everything a rather gloomy yet mysterious feel to it. The castle is beautiful, parts restored after a fire just after the second world war. And yes, it's where they filmed Brideshead Revisited, as Biddy told me when we got there. It's also got some very friendly ducks, who were more than happy to eat out of your hands!

We spent most of the day at Castle Howard, before driving down the road a little bit to Kirkham Priory. Another ruined medieval religious establishment, it's a romantic ruin, and you can see from the little bits of detail left that it would have been an incredible place to be in it's heyday.

 I know this picture looks like James is taking a leak, but I can assure you he is not. It seemed odd that such a singular piece had survived. You can see how detailed the building would have been.

There you go, two amazing things to do in a day on the outskirts of York. Next up, Lindesfarne!