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I did have a lovely time in Yorkshire; Jill and Michael have a wonderful house - frankly, a bed to myself would be more luxury than I'm used to; J and M put me up in the best guest bedroom and I slept like a baby. I will probably have to send them a bottle of wine at Christmas from one of the better Ontario or BC wineyards; that's going to be an expensive proposition but they deserve it.
I got myself a whirlwind tour of Yorkshire, starting with the coach station. The drive from London to Yorkshire is a decent two and a half hours, so it's only logical that the coach takes six and a half. Then I spent another two hours at terminal because Jill and Michael thought I was going by train. I got myself a lovely ride on a rickety old double deck bus (unfortunately it was not red) and hey presto, arrived in Holmfirth, a little town in the middle of the rolling hills of Yorkshire.
Jill and Micheal's house is a lovely change after London - the last hostel had a good amount of life but I was in a triple bunk bed in a fifty man dorm, no sleep at all! - an old English cottage built of stone. They've redone the kitchen since I was last there; they got rid of their ever-burning stove and put in some nice granite countertops. It's a lovely house, but apparently because of the way it's built it's difficult to maintain and expensive to heat.
Over the weekend, we took the dogs for a good walk up the hill, met Christian and Nikola in their home and met my little cousins James (3) and Theo (2) - James is going to be trouble in a few years, I think. They have a lovely Victorian home near a park, and the place is a total mess (two baby children will do that, I think); we had a good talk and some coffee.
After that, we had to retreat, hit the hills with the dogs - Millie is a bit of a handful - and went to see an amateur production of a Midsummer Night's Dream. Over the course of three days, I've seen a very professional (Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndam) and a very amateur (Midsummer's) production of Shakespear - it's difficult to say which I prefer. David Tennant have excellent physical comedy and great chemistry, but the Holmfirth Picturedrome has an intimacy, even if Puck didn't quite hit all his lines perfectly.
After that, on the 14th it was Nikola's birthday, so we headed over to her parent's house, another rambling Georgian house with a very excellent garden. I didn't make much of a showing - I'm something of a stranger to those cousins - but I ended up getting into a very interesting conversation right before I had to leave! In short, the food was good and the conversation better. It made me feel a little loss, seeing what it's like to have a big extended family - everyone was trading gossip, garden tips and recipes.
Well, now I'm going to grab some running shoes and perhaps try them out; I'm going to do a bit of exploring today, maybe hit up the Natural Sciences museum in the afternoon. Cheers for now.
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