So I’m going to post some pictures from my holiday way back in October because I didn’t when I got back and I need cheering up…

It’s not a holiday if I don’t go and wander around something ruined. Ryan says that I don’t so much go on holiday as a geography field trip, which is usually the point were I tell him that if he is going to be insulting, he needs to be correct and it’s a HISTORY field trip. I was dreadful at geography at school and my only notable achievement during the three years I was forced to do it, was improving my left handed scrawl. However, as this is  because my geography teacher sent me off to Special English* for remedial handwriting lessons, it’s not something I like to dwell on.

Anyway, Fountains Abbey. One of the great monasteries of the medieval period destroyed by Henry VIII during the Reformation. It’s beautiful and sad and enormous. Like Holy Island, it’s strange to wonder around it and think about it whole and in use. I do wonder about how history would be different if Catherine of Aragon had just had a son that lived. Would Fountains have survived intact? Of course if that had happened and it was a ‘working’ monastery, I wouldn’t have been allowed inside the grounds because women women weren’t.

*I don’t know what the accurate modern term for it is, when I had to do it, it was Special English for people who couldn’t do something, reading, writing, behave properly or was generally struggling with keeping up. No I wasn’t happy about it, yes I can still do all the handwriting exercises.