retiredmartin

July 2023. Castle Howard, near York.

A Sunday of thunderstorms never arrived, and Mrs RM wanted a walk as she targets “10k a day”. She should take up pub ticking on foot; plenty of steps there.

By a stroke of luck, my next nearest unticked GBG23 pub (90 minutes away !) is on the doorstep of Castle Howard, home to rich folk, a nice walk, and a free campervan pitch for the night.

By coincidence, the hills round here are named after a Howard, too, but they’re not hilly enough to put off Mrs RM, who anyway is battle-hardened by Sheffield.

The biggest challenge is getting the campervan through the gaps in the castle mounds.

There’s a lot of architecture here that looks faintly familiar. Clearly this needle was stolen from the Yanks,

while this pyramid is almost certainly modelled on the one in Las Vegas. Who said America had no history.

The pyramids are the unexpected highlight of a two hour walk from and to Welburn, which looked much too well-to-do to leave our van overnight.

It costs £47 (honest) for the guided tour and gardens, so the free self-guided option was always the only option, and you get decent views of the mausoleum (containing local resident BRAPA’s dog-eared GBG20) and the house itself.

The BBC weather forecast was insistent heavy showers and pestilence was about to descend, so we took the shortest route back via the towers.

I hoped Mrs RM hadn’t seen the sign that said “Bull in field”.

“Did that sign say bull in field ?”. She has scars (not literal) from the Leintwardine incident on the short cut to Th Sun.

“Don’t worry Mrs RM. I’ll protect you”.

There WAS a bull, but it was preoccupied, and we made it through a less scary field of sheep.

Our stop, half a mile south at The 7th Earl of Carlisle (top) was adjudged a safe and Instagramable place to park up.

The pub, meanwhile, turned out to be a classic…