Grassington is famous for being the 'home' of the Calendar Girls, middle aged ladies who posed discreetly naked for a calendar in 1999 and started a trend. Well I think that is its main claim to fame these days but it is a wonderful time warp sort of place located on a steep hillside above the river Wharfe in the Yorkshire Dales. It has a rather dire website - Grassington - which I think is rather quite dismal and does not do it justice at all. But then the following images may not do either. Grassington is not some out of-the-way, dead end, one horse village, but a vibrant bustling lively enjoyable place with a lot of activity and activities that gets a pretty hefty traffic of visitors who probably help to make it so.
We went there yesterday to visit our ex-nextdoor neighbours who moved to this somewhat out of the way spot surrounded by farmland and moors on the far side of Skipton. Being assimilated into a small long established village community, no easy task for comers-in, they have a lovely home surrounded by fields on its edge, where the one main road through the village winds its relentless way uphill and peters out into a track through farmland, old moorland and old quarrying remains and nowhere else in particular. Actually there is a very fine cabinet maker's establishment just up the hill when you think the road is probably going nowhere. A friend had their dining room furniture made there and it is exceptionally good. Strangely they have no website but maybe Grassington is a bit behind the times and after all it is in a bit of a remote location up there.
The husband was stressed. Trying to cope with a convalescent recently incapacitated wife whose leg was in plaster, he was 'working from home' whilst being nurse, performing all the domestic chores and looking after their flock of sheep, a scattering of hens, two dogs and a cat.
Having the opportunity for a quick wander around the village just before the sun went down I took my camera. It was a beautiful clear crisp almost frosty day which did not feel make one feel cold as the air was still.
One must be aware of the regular fast moving, immensely big tractors that fly around the narrow roads in these parts, dragging sundry farm equipment and taking no prisoners. I say that, having been thankful for a decent bit of grass verge to escape one.
Farm machinery across from the house we visited.
This shop has a vast display of wooden stuff on the other side of its frontage that I haven't shown, that looks as though it should be in the Tyrol or somewhere like that, with those carved faces in a bit of waney edged wood and what not. It must take an age to set it all up outside every day.
I think this one migrated across an alleyway but maybe looks like a machine in China created it
Just a doorway
This shop looked interesting as the window display was crammed with stuff, but I hadn't time to linger so took its pic to study later.
Enlarged a bit
A very low sun
Lower sun and deep shadow. There are some very good little shops here for all the necessities of life and more besides
A fine looking Care Home with an eternally restful view to the front
A lovely old barn
But no longer any access for the doves, if that is what the openings were for
A tiny doorway in a cottage between the plastic plumbing - 1683. I suspect there were once the initials of the original inhabitants to the left hand side of the lintel but they appear to have been removed.
Some lovely cottages.
They should be very lucky living here
The sun about to go. Unfortunately, even on a very quiet late winter's afternoon the place is pretty full of cars, a necessity of life. How good it would look with no motor vehicles but just the odd horse and cart around. Would be back a 100 years or more authentically.
Notice the white frost forming on the stone roof slates. In the crisp still air the voices of the two young women talking across the 'main road' carried far and wide.
It has been a good Autumn for colours and I regret I never got around to take some pictures.
So after a quick walk around the village I went up the hill with the dogs to the beginning of nowhere much to see the sheep, Whitefaced Woodlands, and also an assortment of free range hens going to bed, as the sun finally went to bed too. - And came home with half a dozen fresh eggs.
