Down to business

I've made the decision to stop bitching about writing and just write.

This morning I got up and walked around Buxton. It's an interesting town, a small city really. It definitely has the look of a place that was once thriving, then fell on hard times, but now is on the upswing. It has some beautiful features- a gorgeous opera house, a striking university center, and a beautiful city park called Pavilion Garden that I had the opportunity to walk around this morning.

It's a large park, not like a town square kind of thing. It goes on for quite a ways-I think I saw somewhere it's 4 acres or so. It's beautifully landscaped, a bit like the Boston Public Garden, without swans but with on a hill. so it had multiple levels, a mini railroad, and nice playgrounds. Everything about it was pleasing.

We had our breakfast and then headed out for a day of scenic beauty. We headed east through the Peaks National Park. There's nothing there that I'd call an actual peak- it's more like rolling hills. But it's very pretty and it was enjoyable to drive through it. Lots of sheep.

We then headed north to North York Moors National Park. We stopped in a very cute little town called Helmsley for lunch and a walk around. Helmsley had a bunch of cute shops, many of which sold food and ice cream and coffee. We also saw our first fish and chips place promising gluten-free batter.

Then north into the moors. We went in not really knowing what a moor was, and having driven through the middle of it, I'd be hard pressed to tell you it was different from the rest of the beautiful landscapes we'd seen earlier in the day. Not that there's anything wrong with that, really. It was definitely very pretty, and we saw an impressive ruined abbey along the way, so it certainly wasn't time wasted.

One thing I should not is that I don't understand why there are so many places selling plants. It would seem like the last thing you'd need to buy; all kinds of plants seem to grow everywhere around here. They're everywhere, so are you not allowed to dig up the pretty flowers on the roadside so you have to buy them instead? I don't know maybe you can't. One must have their own privately bought and raised plants.

Eventually we got to Durham, our resting place for a couple of nights. We had some difficulty on the way here because our navigations systems, and we have 3 of them, all failed to find the place we were going. After stumbling around for a bit, including driving the wrong way down a one way street, we pulled over so I could walk around and look for it. In fact, it is literally impossible to drive to in a normal fashion. It's on a little spur off that one way street I successfully navigated against traffic, and the only way to get onto it is to back in, about 150 yards. So I did, so we could drop the bags by the hotel. Then I backed down the one-way street some more to got a parking space.

Whew! That's all for now. Will write more about Durham tomorrow.