Hartington

For the second August bank holiday weekend we rented a car and drove to Yorkshire. We had booked a cottage in a small village but before we get ahead of ourselves we have to explain the drive first of all.

The drive strarted out OK, we drove south to get on the m25. From there pretty much nothing went right. The m25 was a parking lot, it took us about 3 hours just to get out of London. Fortunately Theo had been reasonably well behaved to this point.

I can't remember the exact route but once off the m25 we were on to the next motorway which was moving better although still had its moments. Theo was still behaving well, eating his way through all his snacks.

And then the traffic was the least of our problems. Theo vomited up all of his considerable afternoon tea. We were stuck in the middle lane of a motorway with traffic that wasn't moving so we had no way of getting out of the car. After two big spews, Theo had filled his car seat with vomit but fortunately not on Jackie or the rental car.

Promptly after the spew, Theo was quite content to go to sleep, literally in a pool of his own vomit.

So we didn't bother pulling over to clean him up, we enjoyed the peace and focussed on getting to our cottage as quickly as possible. Eventually off the motorway we were now relying on the driving directions we'd printed off. It was now dark and the rain was coming down in sheets, I could barely see out the windscreen.

So even if we could read the driving directions, we couldn't see the road signs we were supposed to be following. We did pull off one road only to decide it was the wrong one. Ten minutes later on we realised we'd missed our turn off, and eventually realised the road we'd originally turned down was where we were supposed to be.

We got there in the end, it was a hell of a trip, the weekend was going to have to be a good one to make up for the drive up.

When we arrived at the cottage we were pretty sure it was going to be a great weekend.

The next morning confirmed this.

Hartington is a picture perfect English village

This was our red car, out cottage door to the left of the car.

The general store next door, they had all the stuff a general store should have and had delicious home made cakes at very reasonable prices - we had a few. 

Theo and I went for a little walk on the first morning

On the Monday, Jackie joined us and we went a bit further, Theo confidently striding out in front the whole time. 

The following are views and the surroundings of our cottage....

And some pics of the village we stayed in...

As well as enjoying the cottage and the village, we drove in to Sheffield for a bbq lunch with friends. They are renovating their house at the moment and so there were lots of things for the children to explore, Theo loved it.

We had a great weekend, if you ever have the chance to go visit Hartington I strongly suggest you do.

You'll be pleased to know our journey home was much less eventful.