Wet Friday afternoon in Harrogate

A miserable day with unrelenting dull light. I chose this area of town because the old pavements and cobbles reflect well when wet.

This is Harrogate's famous Pump Rooms, originally built to provide access to the, supposedly health-giving, sulphur water which made Harrogate a popular spa town.

The building is now a museum, which included the opportunity to taste the pungent water. Access to the water is currently restricted because of possible health and safety concerns about trace elements found in samples.

Having once tried the water, which smells very strongly of rotten eggs, I don't think anyone is missing anything by not tasting it. You probably had to be desperate for a cure to drink large quantities of the stuff daily.

The Royal Pump Room sits over the Old Sulphur Well and was completed in 1842. The popularity of sampling the waters and hence visiting Harrogate soared: 1842 it had 3778 drinkers; in 1867 it was 11,626; in 1925 it was 259,000.Promoted as having healing qualities to cure anything from gout to lumbago, visitors included Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and the novelist Charles Dickens, who described Harrogate as: "The queerest place with the strangest people leading the oddest lives!" ( As a Lancastrian, I can't really disagree with him.)