Wednesday 20th July,2011

Hello to all
We arose early today, brekky under our belt we set off along the city wall, what a lovely view, it would be great if one lived here to do that each day one would be extremely fit. We took ourselves off the wall at one point and made our way down to the Railway Museum a fantastic place but you could easily spend the entire day there. The restoratin work done on the old locomotives is quite amazing and you do wonder how they built all these in the first place.
We found our way back to the wall and went back to our B&B to collect our car as we were heading out to Castle Howard, Granada Television made Brideshead Revisited in 1981 and then again Miramax made a newer version in 2007. This is a stunning house and garden complex, in an area of what is called 'outstandng natural beauty' and it certainly is. The Castle was started in 1699 by Charles Howard the 3rd Earl of Carlisle he had asked the playwright John Vanbrugh to build the house. The astonishng collaboration that followed produced one of England's grandest statley homes. Renowned for its architecture, rich collections and sublime landscaping, Castle Howard is still home to the Howard family. The house and grounds work hard what with visitors etc etc it keeps the place going financially. There was a massive fire on 9th November 1940, the dome was rebuilt and redecorated in 1960-1962. There were 20 rooms destroyed and they are only working towards doing something about them now, quite amazing place. The gardens are breathtaking. We left amid torrential rain but walked through the rose garden anyway too lovely to miss. We had seen the fountain (which had only started running today) as over the last number of years the freezing conditions had destroyed the tiles and it all had to be restored and replaced, so we were fortunate indeed. We had many other things planned but alas we ran out of time, came back had a rest and then walked down the road to a lovely Indian Restaursnt for dinner. We leave here tomorrow morning to go to Shrewsbury for two days. All the best Sam and Sabine PS You could easily have 10 days here. Delightful place and not just a tourist destination either.