Wolds Diary: Worthwhile trip and sneaky dog tricks
After taking the call, I sat down and reached for the box and it was as I had left it, only with a distinct absence of pizza. I looked around and the dogs were sitting just where they had been before but one, Looroll, looked guilty and did lick her chops. I thought it through and realized she is the only dog athletic and tall enough to have climbed up and taken the food without disturbing anything else. Maybe she did me a favour, I was supposed to be on a diet... She didn’t even look in the slightest bit guilty. I will put anything edible in a more secure place in future. I should have known better.
On another I drove over to Harrogate. I’d been contacted by a lady who wanted to give me an unfinished quilt she had started and could no longer complete.
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Hide AdOn the journey, down the A64 I noticed a succession of raptors, hovering over the road side, obviously hunting. At first it was a series of kestrels, then a red kite and finally I saw a buzzard much higher up.
I love Harrogate but not the traffic there. I found the house I wanted opposite the impressive Majestic Hotel. The lady lived in the buildings that were built at the turn of the 1900s and her place was immaculate.
Over a coffee, I looked at some of her beautiful pictures and there, on one of her walls, was a copy of a picture I know well, as it was on the wall of a house I lived in as a child. It was of the Duke of Wellington, astride Copenhagen. It was like meeting an old friend. She offered me a biscuit, and I can honestly say she bakes the best gingernuts I have ever had.
I learned something very interesting while I was there. The land on which both the hotel and surrounding buildings had been sold for the purpose by Howard Carter, the Egyptologist that found Tutankhamun’s tomb. I learn something new every day.
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Hide AdOn one walk with the dogs this week I managed to gain a very handsome black labrador, called Spud, for a while, until we came across his owner.
The dogs all played together before we parted and I got back to the car with five very happy, tired and grubby dogs.