Category: Ripon

Spectacular Streetshows

Ripon Theatre Festival this last weekend: and Saturday and Sunday brought street performances and spectacles all over town. Best of all was that despite the incessant rain and intermittent thunder we were threatened with, not a drop fell while we were all out and about enjoying ourselves (and performing too, in the case of choirs like mine). But. What a cheek! Hardly anyone was decked out in red! I’m relying on photos from previous years to plug the Red Gap.

For Becky’s #Simply Red.

Our Little Neighbourhood

Just over ten years ago, we moved back to England from France. And we had a plan. We’d move to Ripon. It’s a smaller town than Harrogate, where we’d lived before, and which now seemed a scarily huge megalopolis (population 160, 000) compared with small-time Laroque d’Olmes (population 2,700). We were quite clear. We wanted to be in town, so we could make use of public transport and be within walking distance of shops and local amenities. But first of all, we’d rent somewhere so we could take our time choosing the right place.

The very first place we looked at ticked none of those boxes. It was just outside a village with not so much as a shop, five miles from Ripon, has four buses a day, none in the evening and on Sunday. The place on offer was the upper floor of a house attached to a gracious 18th and 19th century country house, set among large gardens, a wooded area and pasture. We fell for it. And ten years later, we’re still here, with no plans to move on.

You can see the pitched roof of our house, attached to the bigger house next door.

The gardens, the woodland are not ours, but we can use them freely. Our landlord lives in another house on the same site, while other family members occupy the bigger house.

Our house is probably no longer recognisable as the dwelling it once was, but parts of the original are still here. It was occupied from the 1200s by lay brothers from Fountains Abbey, who managed sheep and some crops. They slept in a dormitory – the first floor. The house was only re-configured so that it had separate rooms in the Victorian era, when it provided living accommodation for the servants working for the residents of the house next door. So much history here, yet most of it remains unknown.

Views from various windows

Our nearest neighbours.

Why would we ever want to move?

For Tina’s Lens-Artists Challenge: Walking the Neighbourhood

Statuary for Small People to Enjoy

Monochrome Madness this week asks us to feature statues. I could show you Michelangelo’s David. I could feature statues of The Great and The Good, as featured in all big cities everywhere. Or Nymphs and Greek Gods from set-piece fountains everywhere. But I’ve decided to go low-brow and show you pieces destined to appeal to children, or adults in search of their inner child.

Let’s begin at the Arboretum at Thorp Perrow.

Then we’ll stay local and inspect the Alice in Wonderland characters you’ll find in Ripon Spa Gardens. Lewis Carroll spent part of his childhood in Ripon, because his father was a canon at the cathedral here.

I hope you recognise the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts.

Then there’s this fellow, part of a sculpture trail promoted recently in London by the children’s charity Whizz Kidz.

Here are some gargoyles, not necessarily designed for children, but certainly appealing to them: from the Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona, and the Església de Sant Julià in Argentona.

Monks and the Christian faithful – or certainly the masons working for them – generally weren’t above fashioning satisfyingly scary pieces. Here are two battered relics: one from Rievaulx Abbey, and the other from Rheims Cathedral.

My last image isn’t of a statue designed to be amusing. But Neptune at Studley Royal always makes me and any children I happen to be with laugh when the poor fellow is sporting a seagull headpiece.

And my feature photo? Are they even statues? Well, I don’t know what else to call these two. They’re from Valencia’s annual Fallas Festival, where humorous figures, originally made of wood, are toted round town in March each year to celebrate the arrival of spring.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, hosted this week by PR, of Flights of the Soul.

And Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

And Natalie’s Photographing Public Art Challenge (PPAC).

Getting in Touch with Our Inner Child

It was Ripon’s third Theatre Festival last week, and the weekend was to be given over to the streets and the park for theatre-in-the-street. The first two festivals had been sunny, warm, and everything good the weather could offer. Last weekend’s forecast was unremittingly vile. Rain, wind, thunder … everything you don’t want. Ripon’s luck had run out.

Except it hadn’t. Apart from one short sharp shower in the middle of Sunday, the weather was – sunny, warm enough, and everything anyone could have wished for.

Come and have a stroll. We could join Struzzo the ostrich and Maxim as they wander round the park.

Kit and Caboodle told a good yarn from their laden mule- cart. It was nicely illustrated by a moving picture show, transcribed onto an apparently unending scroll of paper unfurling before our eyes. And with added paper puppets.

We could watch the swirling-skirted clog-dancers rhythmically and musically clickety clacking their clogs.

Or we could wait for a train with the Rhubarb Theatre and their Three Suitcases as they try to set off on holiday. We’d have a long wait. Ripon doesn’t have a station.

Oh, hang on! There’s plenty going on near the Market Square too…. such as Fireman Dave …

… I want to catch the Bachelors of Paradise …

… and Logy on Fire, who does astonishing feats of acrobatics and balance with batches of discarded cigar boxes …

And there’s so much more. I only managed to see Four Hundred Roses, whom I photographed here, as they wandered up Kirkgate between performances.

I wish you could have been actually – rather than virtually – there too. Maybe next year?

The Wrong Kind of Renewal

Poor old Ripon Spa Baths. A hundred and twenty years old, and now – quite literally – put out to grass. We have a new Leisure Centre here in town now. These Edwardian baths are now surplus to requirements and up for sale. Meanwhile, doughty seedlings and saplings commandeer cracks in the mortar and gaps in the tiling: putting down roots that will let water in and begin to crumble brickwork.

The header image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Brian Shore.

For Becky’s #SquaresRenew

Do you prefer … colour? … or monochrome?

Here was a quiet moment in Ripon Spa Gardens last Saturday. All of us who are Over a Certain Age had formed orderly queues outside every single doctors’ surgery in town – all three of them – to get not only a ‘flu jab, but also an unexpectedly delivered Covid booster shot. You’ve never seen so many older people in town at one time, or witnessed such parking chaos. No wonder the old geezer on the bench wanted a break.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.

Ripon Yarn Bombs for the King

It’s only 8.05 a.m., and even on a music station like Radio 3 there’s no escape from unremitting Coronation fever. Before I go and hide, I’ll share images I took the other evening in Ripon, which has chosen to celebrate by yarn bombing the city centre.

While I was in town, the cathedral bell-ringers were practising for today. Can’t beat English bell-ringing.

Ripon Cathedral bell-ringers

Ripon’s not alone. Nearby Thirsk seems to have gone whimsical, rather than respectful. I think we’ll have to pop along and see for ourselves.

For Debbie’s Six Word Saturday.