29. Castle Howard

Where:  York, England
When: September 7, 2013
With: Emma and Gemma

For one last "girl's weekend" while I was living in the UK, Emma, Gemma and I decided to head up to one of England's northernmost cities: York. While the city itself is pretty cool, I'll cover it in my next post. This post focuses more on what's outside of York, in the hilly moors of the county of Yorkshire. What is a moor? I don't know!! I've wondered ever since I read Wuthering Heights! Heathcliff was always "wandering the moors", forlorn over his lost love, Catherine. But what are they!?! 

Before we get to answer the great mystery of what a moor actually is, we headed to the item in the book: Castle Howard. 

Castle Howard was built in the early 1700s about 15 miles outside York for the 3rd Earl of Carlise, Charles Howard. The estate on which it sits is 13,000 acres, giving a stunning place to tour both indoors and outdoors. 

Inside the estate, the Howard family's impressive art collection covers the walls and fills the hallways. 

It still serves as a residential home, and some of the historically decorated rooms continue to house distinguished guests. 

In 1940, a fire destroyed much of the interior of the house. Years later, the BBC determined this would be the ideal location to film Brideshead Revisted and offered to renovate parts of the home in exchange for a filming location. 

The large room in the back wing of the home was converted to a hospital back during World War I. 

After touring the inside, we started to explore the grounds. Given it was England, there was a sufficient amount of primly manicured gardens. This one even had a vegetable garden.

One of the main attractions of the grounds is the giant fountain behind the house. The main feature of the fountain is a large, atlas-like statue, holding a globe encircled by astrological figures. We had fun going around and around trying to remember the name of each sign.

The rest of the estate is rolling green hills, overlooking the countryside of Yorkshire. We probably could have spent the rest of the day exploring the grounds, but we had a packed schedule and had to settle with just overlooking them from afar.

It was time to get moving and get closer to solving the mystery of the moors. As we made our way toward the North York Moors National Park, we stopped off in this small village to see the beautiful ruins of an abbey.

The village also had this gorgeous little pub, where we ordered ourselves some Shepherd Pie and Yorkshire ale, and enjoyed a delicious meal in the sun. 

After lunch, we started to drive and eventually crept our way over the line into the park. My eyes were peeled for the moors, and eventually, we spotted them. 

To be honest, it makes more sense now why I could never figure out what moors are because they are really hard to describe. It was spongy and mossy, but dry and brittle under my feet, all at the same time. As I stood in the moors, wind blowing in my hair, I abandoned myself to feeling like Catherine, listening for Heathcliff yelling my name over the moors! 

As we drove around, the scenery was beautiful. The moors are fairly flat and indistinguishable, which can make them tricky to navigate on foot, especially on a cloudy, misty day.

The purple heather that is characteristic of this landscape was just starting to fade (August being the high time for blooming), leaving a light purple hue across the landscape. 

What English scene would be complete without sheep?

Towards the north part of the park, we hit the sea and decided it was time to turn around. But no worries, I had finally seen the moors!

While Castle Howard was a beautiful place to be see, I loved it more as the catalyst to finally solve the mystery of the moors. A great first day in York!