Malham Cove: Harry Potter Tour

This weekend we went to Malham Cove - famous for its scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie.  It also is a eons-old glacier face with a waterfall running through it.  It was just an hour away and turned out to be some of the most stunning countryside in the Yorkshire Dales.  We had a lovely day hiking to the Cove and up the side for the most stunning views.  What a beautiful day!

We hiked up this rock face ...I carried Alfie all the way up!

Alfie contemplates the enormity of the cove:

We took a rest on the way up:

The view from the top was incredible:

Family photo at the top:

PKomma considers the universe: 

This is the closest to the scene from Harry Potter 

The beautiful glacial creek: 

Tulip Heaven - Keukenhof Garden

The most famous of gardens in the Netherlands (and maybe the world!) is Keukenhof Garden.  It's like the Disney World of flowers...filled to the brim with the most beautiful tulip gardens.  Everywhere you turned there were perfect lush tulips and other complimentary flowers.  We arrived at 8 am - this was perfect because we had almost an hour before it became mobbed with tourists.  But even mobbed with tourists, Keukenhof was incredibly impressive.  Here are just a few of the beautiful scenes (it was hard to take a bad photo!):



An empty garden filled with color:

Field of hyacinths - they smelled incredible.

Like walking in a Claude Monet painting:

Perfection at ever turn:

Jaw droppingly beautiful:

I wish I could go here every day!

Netherlands: Stunning Tulip Fields #TripofaLifetime

On our second day in the Netherlands, we drove around the incredible fields of tulips that dot the countryside.  It was truly one of the most amazing sights I have seen - a piece of heaven here on earth.  Standing in the fields surrounded by a sea of tulips with no one around was indescribable. Here are a few of the photos of the thousands we snapped.

A stop for picnic supplies at the Gouda cheese market:

Knee high in a sea of tulips

The colors were magnificent and the precision of planting was unbelievable.  Perfect rows of single colored tulips

The colors were truly out of this world:

Here is the rearview camera of the car...ha !

A dramatic sky over some amazing tulips

Photographer extraordinaire: 

Netherlands Road Trip - Day 1 - Windmills

I remember reading lots of books about windmills as a kid - and there was always a very specific look to them (not like the modern electricity-generating ones we see here in Yorkshire).  On our first day in the Netherlands we went to the Kinderdijk Windmills - a UNESCO World Heritage site for its history in being some of the earliest water management systems in the Netherlands.  It was everything I imagined it to be!

We also stopped by the Kasteel De Haar - a very impressive castle as well as a cheese shop.  A great way to start the trip...though you'll see we did get some crummy weather!  In good news, we were well prepared with rain jackets, boots, and umbrellas. We have quickly become much better prepared for foul weather.


How beautiful are these hand-made, hand painted clogs?  We saw them making them in front of us!

Kasteel De Haar was quite impressive... especially its moat

We love castle hopping!

The windmills...so incredibly beautiful and picturesque.

Beautiful sights, but poor weather! At least I had a good umbrella and wellies!

I like this photo because you can kind of see how the windmills work...each has water connecting direcly into it.

We love windmills!

If You Go: Dutch Countryside Itinerary

One of my most requested trips since we moved here was visiting the Dutch tulip fields during their bloom.  Wow did this live up to expectations!  Since we wanted to see the fields and the famous Kukenhof gardens outside of Amsterdam, we decided to skip the city and stay in towns and villages in the surrounding area.  It was a treat and a great reason to rent a car.  Below is our three day itinerary - a lot of driving, but it was very easy and well worth it:

Day One
9 am: Arrive at aiprport in Amsterdam
11 am: Stop at Clara Maria's Clog Factory and Cheese Farm.  Watch them make clogs by hand, make beautiful gouda cheese, and visit some neat cows.  We bought lots of cheese for souvenirs along with a number of other handmade items.  Worth a stop!
1 pm: Drive to Kasteel de Haar.  Another amazing castle, this time with a huge moat.  The grounds were beautifully manicured (though no tulips) and the tour was neat.  It was a fun way to spend a few hours.
3 pm: Visit Kinderdijk Windmills.  WOW! These looked just like they do in children's books - perfectly picturesque and still working to keep their water system working.  Truly amazing to walk about a mile and see ~25 preserved windmills. An UNESCO preserved heritage site.
6 pm: Stop for the evening at the Hampshire Hotel de Arendshoeve in a little town near Gouda.  This was a great stop and we had dinner at the adorable Eetcaffe 't Centrum where we had a very filling dinner with great wine, meat, and sides.  Great day!

Day Two 
9 am: Arrive at the Saturday Market in Gouda.  The square is filled with all kinds of amazing foods - bakeries, fresh fruits, breads, and of course...gouda cheese.  We grabbed some amazing dutch apple pastries for breakfast and picnic supplies for the day.  The town is also quite cute and we stopped into a number of neat stores / boutiques.
11 am: Arrive in Emmelord where we start the 100 km drive through the tulip fields.  It took us about 6 hours with many stops for photos, coffee, and lunch.  It was one of the most magnificent experiences I have ever had in my life.  Just stunning.
6 pm: Arrive at our hotel for the evening in Zeist - a castle!  Kasteel de Kerckebosch was a neat stop - the main areas were castle-like, the rooms were somewhat modern, and the dinner took forever...but a cool stop.

Day Three
8 am: Arrive as one of the first people at the famous Kukenhof Gardens where we must have seen 500 different varieties of tulips and millions of tulips.  It was absolutely stunning and exceeded every expectation I had.  Wow.  A moment of a lifetime.  Best advice - go as early as you can to avoid crowds!

Birchfield Farm Lambing Live: Wishing Ewe a Happy Monday

Some might remember that last summer we stopped by an Birchfield Icecream Farm where P and Alfie finally got to meet some sheep.  P accomplished a life-long dream and Alfie was very afraid. This year, we made a trip back to Birchfield for "lambing live" - a daily springtime event in their barnyard where you can both hold and feed baby lambs.  I went early last week with the ladies group on base and then we visited again this weekend with P.

There is nothing sweeter than holding a baby lamb...they are very soft and cuddly (who knew that baby lambs like to be held!).  Feeding them is another story...they are very aggressive with the bottle and gulp it down in like 10 seconds!  In any case, below are a few photos of us - a regular occurrence here in Yorkshire, but for us Americans, a real treat!

Sweet little lamb-y:

Mama and her twin lambs:

Beautiful Yorkshire countryside...hard to believe this is just 20 minutes from our house:

P holding a lamb-y...check out his tiny horns:

Lamby love:

Another beautiful Abbey...Whitby

In the 16th century, Henry the VIII enacted the Dissolution of the Monastaries Act.  This forced churches, Abbeys, and other Catholic places of worship to close - and turn their profits over to the monarchy.  Who knew that such an arcane law -  that was revolutionary for the time - could create these beautiful Abbey ruins to visit 500 years later!

Last weekend we took a day trip to Whitby - on the eastern coast of North Yorkshire.  It's a small fishing village on the North Sea.  Whitby is famous as the setting for scenes of Dracula and was the inspiration for Robert Stoker many moons ago.  We climbed the same 199 stairs that the Black Dog in Dracula so famously climbed...but I did the stairs with a white fluffy dog in my arms (Alfie is too little to climb that many stairs!).

If you're going to Whitby, I would offer a few tips: (1) Fish and chips are fresh and famous in Whitby, caught the same day!; (2) Make sure to map out parking when you drive, it's kind of a bear; and (3) If you can, drive about 15 minutes south and visit Robin Hood's Bay...quite the site.  Here are a few photos of our day:

Fishing boats in Whitby.  The Abbey is up on the top of the hill:

Beautiful weather for family photos at the Abbey:

The front of Whitby Abbey with a lovely reflection on the pond:

A good sense of the size and amazing scale of the Abbey...P is the figure on the left:

Alfie takes it all in

Robinhood's Bay:

Alfie LOVED the beach and raced around it until he dropped:

Air Alfie

We had a great day...and one of us slept the whole car ride home: