Skipton Castle and the Dales

We headed down to Skipton today and explored the castle there as it sounded interesting. It was more of a 17th century country house with walls as it was torn down by the Parliamentarians and rebuilt by a lady loyal to them in the fashion of the time. And quite cheaply at that! Not much ornamentation, though there were some genuine 1690s bits of plumbing still intact, pipes and drains and all! It was interesting to see, particularly the old chapel which had strangely been a coach house, stables, and enclosure for cattle! Unusual for a chapel to be left to go like that. The weather was all right but quite dark and damp so it was a good day to do something indoors, it was mostly roofed!

We meandered back from Skipton through the Dales near Malham (awesome light on the hills, not many places to stop though!), and stopped in Settle for some sandwiches, which was celebrating its annual flower pot man festival (can't remember the exact name of it!). There were all sorts of characters and such depicted in flower pots around the place, including these! As I didn't get a great shot of the castle we went to, I thought why not?