York day 3

After checking out, we headed towards Ripon to visit Fountains Abbey, a National Trust property. We were going to do Castle Howard but the £50 entrance fee seemed a bit steep when we can get into NT properties free.
The weather forecast said that it would be sunny from 11 but the sun didn't really come out until much later when we were just about to leave. The forecast seems to be wrong a lot at the moment- very odd. We can't complain though as yesterday was beautiful and it was supposed to be cloudy!
We walked around the property and had lunch just before we left. Afterwards, we headed back to York to fill our boot with as many of Matt's things as we could squeeze in as he's coming home from uni next week and only has a little car. I was pretty amazed by how much we got in including a bike, one large and one small suitcase, a desk chair, 2 large plastic storage boxes, a printer and 3 or 4 bags etc!
The journey back was probably the quickest we've done in about 2 3/4 hours as the roads were ok and we went the new way. The toll motorway was virtually empty.