An old friend from high school and university is now living in Oxford. Earlier this month we met halfway (well, not quite halfway) and spent a few days in the Yorkshire Dales and the city of York. We started the week glamping in the North Dales. No wonder James Herriot fell in love with this countryside (All Creatures Great and Small has been one of my favourite books & TV shows for decades). CB lives less than half an hour from the Cotswolds, considered some of England’s most beautiful regions, and I have the Scottish Highlands and Islands just outside my back door, but we were both blown away by the hills, moors, and dales of Yorkshire. Every curve in the road brought a stunning new vista.
This was an A.B.C. tour with a vengeance; I saw more mediaeval castles that week than I have in my entire lifetime. Years ago, I was in Belfast with LL and we went to the Game of Thrones exhibit. I have never seen GOT, have no desire to see it, don’t know any of the characters, and, apart from something called The Red Wedding, couldn’t name a single thing about the series. But LL is a big GOT fan, and I’ve gotta say, going around the exhibit with someone who was so into it was fun – her enthusiasm and expertise made my experience that much more enjoyable.
Well, it was exactly the same with CB and British mediaeval history. I have what might be called a working knowledge of people like Richard III, Henry VII, and so on, but CB’s knowledge of the Plantagenets & the Tudors, the Yorks & the Beauforts, and the Henrys & the Edwards is encyclopaedic. Her passion made places like Middleham Castle and Skipton Castle really really interesting and I appreciated what I was seeing so much more by touring around with her (just don’t get her started on the War of the Roses – seriously, I thought she was going to smack one tour guide upside the head when he mentioned red roses).