Whitby, The North Yorkshire Moors and Rievaulx Abbey

Saturday 10th July 2010

The day started with a giggle for us, as Ray bought a newspaper. The headline was a warning regarding the expected heatwave. Temperatures we expected to reach as high as 28 degrees!!!! Even the night time temperatures were not expected to drop below 18 degrees in some areas!!! Goodness me - how wold we survive???

We headed away from Scarborough across The Wolds - I have absolutely no idea what a The Wolds are, technically speaking, but they provided us with some lovely scenery. We were headed for Whitby, from whence, my tour guide informs me, Captain James Cook set out on his voyage of discovery that gave us what we now know as Australia. First stop the Whitby Abbey (oh yes - I know - there are many more of them here than you and poke a stick at), where we got a great view over the town and the bay below. We decided not to go into town as the view was good enough!

I forget where we were headed for next, as we never actually made it there, but we drove through some very steep, windy and narrow roads accompanied all the way by some of the most breathtaking scenery I have ever seen.

We got right up on top of the North Yorkshire Moors, and I was delighted to find that the heather was in flower!! We did stop to ponder, though, how desolate this area would be in the dead of winter............. Luckily for me - it's summer right now. The heath is way more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. I'm really not sure what I expected, but from some angles it's a carpet of lilac as far as the eye can see.............. I simply don't have the words for it.

After our random tour across the moors we went to Rievaulx (no - I can't say it!) Abbey. We went specifically because they were advertising medieval arts and crafts there. I really didn't want to see another abbey, but it turned out to impress Ray very much. It was apparently the first and largest Abbey in England.

It did have an awesome drystone wall that impressed me - and I can hear you all thinking what is the fascination with stone walls - If you have an answer to that then you have solved a long standing puzzle of medical science - how Narelle's mind works!!!

The fun bit for me was the demonstrations and explanations of life in medieval times.

The woman below was making dishes from sugar and coloring them with dyes made by mixing rosewater with things like saffron and strawberries.

This guy was demonstrating the lettering of the time and explaining how they made ink. They found a recipe that involves placing crumbled 'oak galls' (these are basically, small, round, empty wasps nests, about the size of a cherry) and a rusty nail in a jar of water for two weeks. Hey Presto - Ink.

He also talked about dyes. Blue dye was the most expensive as it was somehow derived from Lapis Lazuli ( a semi-precious stone not found locally). It was used infrequently and they say that the cost made it so precious that this is why the Virgin Mary is always depicted in blue.

Although I didn't get a photo, the most interesting discussion was about midwifery. There was some very interesting folklore. For example - they would wrap a shed snake skin around
their waists believing that this meant they would give birth as easily as a snake sheds it's skin. Another interesting trick was to use a chafing dish, filled with hot coals and with frankincense resin thrown in to create a pleasant aroma, they would arrange the woman's skirts over the chafing dish and then give the mother something nasty to smell - often burnt hair. The baby would want to escape the nasty smell and be attracted to the pleasant one, hence an easier birth!!

After all this information we made our way back to Scarborough for a rest, a walk, a lovely dinner, a few drinks and some karaoke!!