Today was the annual St Wilfrid Procession through Ripon. This celebrates our city's patron saint, St Wilfrid, who was one of the great northern saints and important people of early Northumbria. He is very unlike the ascetic Irish (Celtic) saints t...
Read moreAfter a couple of weeks away, we return home to glorious weather; blue skies and really hot. Normally, we are still away this weekend, so we generally miss the local show - the Aldborough and Boroughbridge Agricultural Show - which is gentle like th...
Read moreAround a year ago, I wrote a few blogs about walking along the Rivers Skell and Ure in Ripon. The rivers run through Ripon and circle around the ever looming presence of Ripon Cathedral on the mount at Ripon's heart. The rivers bring the countrysid...
Read moreFor someone with little spirituality, I spent much of last Sunday at religious events. Both of them were for Ripon Cathedral Choir School, which is celebrating 50 years since its foundation by Ripon Cathedral. Proof that little old Ripon can be a g...
Read moreOn Thursday 1 July 2010, I did one of Axel's Random Walks near Nosterfield and Thornborough in North Yorkshire. I recently bought myself an Ordnance Survey Explorer Map of Ripon & Boroughbridge (#299) and in the top left corner you can just find...
Read moreSometimes you visit some people, who really are so good and wonderful that it shames you a bit. The people at Jennyruth Workshops are some of those unsung heroes that underpin every society in the world; they just get on with it, doing good work, da...
Read moreRipon is blessed with lots of fabulous waterways and green corridors through the city. One of the most noticeable is Ripon Canal, which cuts a straight caesura into the centre of the city, with the canal sitting on your left as you come in along Bor...
Read moreI mentioned in my first blog about walks in Ripon in North Yorkshire that I did not believe that Ripon had only been settled as a monastery in 650AD. I believe this basic historical fact about Ripon's history even less now after walking along the Ri...
Read moreI went to a public lecture by Professor John Beddington who is currently Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government. He was lecturing on Climate Change as a University of York Biology lecture. And yesterday he was back in London attacking climate s...
Read moreYesterday evening, the Steenberg family finally went to visit the milk bar in Ripon. It was a treat after we took the kids to Evensong in Ripon Cathedral on Monday evening for the Whit Monday service; that was beautiful with the service sung by the...
Read moreAs you walk through the centre of Ripon alongside the River Skell, you get an appreciation of how many bridges there are. Sure, Ripon isn't Venice with its profusion of quaint, romantic curve bridges that play on the imagination nor the strong, engi...
Read moreI have been spending a few minutes every day exploring the waterways of Ripon over the last month as part of some course work. It has been really enlightening and an abject lesson in what you can miss on your doorstep when you keep your eyes closed...
Read moreWe have been discussing the ins and outs of Yorkshire Salad, and some of the different variations, including a very similar recipe called Granny Salad which Sandra (one of our amazing spice packers) was handed down from her Granny in Devon. Sadie -...
Read moreWe received a letter today with our milk and our milkround has been taken over by a gentleman from Wetherby, called John Moore. He has been in the dairy trade for over 20 years and we hope that means this Great British tradition of a milk round can...
Read moreOne of the major users of energy in a house is for heating the building. Space and water heating in homes gives off about 20% of the UK's carbon dioxide emissions, which is about 5 tonnes CO2 per home every year.
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