Hartington, England

Posted on January 10, 2024  •  16 minutes  • 3272 words

This part of our trip had really turned into ‘make plans for next place, while you are in the current place’. We knew Dan had to be in Sheffield for a talk on the 15th, but we were waiting to hear for our interview date and location, so didn’t want to plan too far in advanced. We had the car booked until the 19th in Aberdeen, where we were planning to catch a ferry to Shetland. Everything between was up in the air. We had such great experiences at the first two YHAs (youth hostels) we had stayed at, that we broke our rule of going back and forth between AirBnB and hostel. The amenities for us made it better than a hotel. Huge common areas, board games, restaurant or kitchen, space outside for the kids to run around, people to talk to and generally in super cool buildings in super cool places.

We are pretty low maintenance really and the small room and very basic bathroom never bothered us. Even sharing a room with the kids was fun. Every morning turned into a tickle fest in Dan’s bed as I layed there and watched/cheered. Anyways, we got a bit overzealous with our hostel stays and we were ready for our own house/apartment by the end, but we just kept finding cool ones we wanted to stay along our route to Sheffield. We also made the mistake of assuming they all had laundry since the first 2 did. They all had drying rooms, but not laundry. Still don’t totally get that.

We left reluctantly left Snowdonia and had about a 3.5 hour drive. With leaving on the later side, we didn’t make it too far before we had to get food. Dan found an amazing place in Abergele, called Roots Cafe. Just what I was looking for. It was lunch time, but I still felt like breakfast. All kids got smoked salmon on a bagel and I got avocado toast with poached eggs. Dan got some cheese bread thing with soup. I saw smoothies and couldn’t turn down the green one. There was even a front area where the kids could play while Dan and I had our coffees and waited for the food.

Our waitress was so nice and talkative and told us about the castle in town, where they filmed some reality show. I made a note to look for it the next time we had a tv with a BBC subscription. The castle did look awesome, you could see it from outside, but we just didn’t have the time this day.

After lunch, we walked across the street for some grocery shopping. Loaded up the cart and then I took 3 misbehaved children back to get the car and then pick up Dan after he checked out. Turns out our car, that felt like it was stuffed to the gills, didn’t have a spare tire. We figured this out about 5 days in. So now we had so much space, by putting stuff in the void and the kids no longer had to have backpacks on laps and groceries at their feet.

After a bit too much driving on single lane roads, with 2 directions for traffic, we pulled into the parking lot of another awesome place. It was dark, but you could see the outline of a cool old building. Easy check in and they put us in a 6 person (still all for us) room, so we could have more space. The room was pretty big and with only 2 sets of bunk beds and 2 singles, we had so much more space. Kids begged to play outside and I let them in the courtyard (but stay away from the cow in the barn!) while I made dinner. We really had got into such a rhythm staying at these places. A few other people were there cooking too, but enough tables, stoves, pots and everything that it was no issue.

Yummy dinner of salad and soup, reading time and then game time. This place had so many cool rooms with so much character.

Got kids to bed finally and went downstairs for some work and beer. When beers have names like this, how can you not order them? Not great beer we found out.

Another breakfast of oatmeal and we decided today would be a heavy on the work and school with lots of playing outside (for the kids) in between. View from the kitchen.

I don’t know if it was actually attached, but there was a farm right next door. You could hear cows when you were in the back.

Most days Dan and I want to do something, but we found when there is a really cool outdoor area, the kids just want to be free. Well, Ben usually wants to do the hike and play and is visually torn on the decision. When they really get into something, we find it best for everyone to just have those days with no plans. We could sort of see them from where we were sitting inside and they knew the boundaries. I can’t express how awesome it is that Max is old enough to tag along with them and one of us don’t have to be out there supervising. It also helps that Ben is responsible and would report back. He even walked Max in at one point when he had fallen, to make sure he made it back okay. Haha, literally a 15 second walk, but that’s Ben.

I did walk down a few times to see what they were up to. It ranged from digging for mud, making a cat house (for a very friendly cat), searching for sticks to make spoons and making mud gingerbread men…with the mined mud. As I walked up and asked what Maw what he was doing he said ‘digging for mud’. True.

This is the view from where they were looking back at the place and approximately the photo on the YHA website. How do you not want to stay here? And bonus, SO affordable!

For lunch we did sandwiches, heavy on the cheese, with extra cheese on the side. All three thought it was the best cheese ever and how can it not be when it’s Dragon cheese. Yeah, that’s why I bought it.

More school, more play, more school, more play. The place had the whole set of Children’s Britannica Encyclopedia. Dan grabbed one and had Ben pick a random topic to write and essay on. He chose the jackal. Then with kids busy outside and Dan working, I went for a run. I stuck to the ‘roads’, not the trails to try minimize the inches of mud on the bottom of my shoes.

The views went on forever and I was 100% in my happy place.

Back and showered and met everyone downstairs for crackers with cheese and super yummy chutney that Dan picked out.

At the store I had tried to buy a lot of UK veggies and the carrots were a hit! They weren’t called mini, just carrots. They were all this size! And they weren’t shaped like a baby carrot it. We did later find bigger ones, but these were still a favorite…and the are too cute.

Another win for us, Turkish Style Garlic Sauce. We purchased one day when we wanted a dipping sauce and a sandwich spread, but didn’t want two different containers with the travel. This is our second bottle.

Another night in the common area with reading and some games after. I had picked up a book off the shelf the night before and it was a page turner, so Dan and I headed back downstairs after putting the kids down and got a bottle of wine. We ended up chatting with a nice couple for hours. We talked travel mainly, which I will never complain about. I didn’t get reading time, but that was okay because I then read until 1am with a flashlight to finish the book. It was called ‘The Fifth Letter’ and was one of those books with a big twist at the end. Not my favorite ending, but I enjoyed the fun of the read and trying to figure it out.

With yesterday being a hang out day, we planned a decent hike for today after morning school work. Lud’s Church (not actually a church) was recommended to us, but we decided to do that the next day since it was on the way to our next place. We were also recommended another hike from the town 1/4 mile away. Always a bonus when we don’t have to get in a car. We started the walk and passed an adorable house with a tree tunnel, as the kids called it.

Within 10 minutes, this was the situation as we headed across a field (part of the route).

It’s hard to really explain HOW much mud and HOW muddy EVERYTHING was! And this is how we looked after 10 minutes, not after 3 hours.

We got to the path part of the route and had about 2 miles walking along this river. River stayed the same, but the surrounding slopes on each side changed at every turn it seemed.

Found a bridge, always fun to cross.

Everything was SO green. Green plants growing next to trees with green ferns on them and green moss.

And the walls! I just couldn’t get over how cool this was.

The slopes opened up a bit and then jagged rocks at the top. We could even see some caves up there, but we decided on the big loop, not the small one, so we kept to the path as much as possible with the kids…which was not a straight line obviously. I mean when there is a river AND rocks, how can you not throw them in. Or a new favorite, throw a stick in and race it down the path.

Slopes still changing.

We got to our turn and there was no pseudo dry way through. And when I say dry, I mean not under inches of water. So we climbed up and around. Bonus, got a view looking back down the valley we had just come out of.

This is the scramble down to avoid the water. Sam and Ben bounded down and much to the disappointment of Max, he had to go with Dan.

Now past the really watery part, we had this…just normal watery.

It was hard to decide which ‘path’ on either side of the river to pick. Both looked bad, but once we picked, we had to commit to making it down or coming back to cross. We went with the right after a couple women ahead of us did and seeing a ‘better path’. It worked until it didn’t, but we did find a pretty deep cave.

I didn’t taste it, but a lot of the plant growing look like mixed salad greens.

The trail completely died out and we were walking on a bunch of sticks that were all clumped together or held together by all the blackberry or raspberry vines…with thorns. We got to the point where we had to cross back and we were able to continue a bit up to a gate that we used to cross. It is 100% amazing that we still had 10 dry socks after this and everything before.

Walked up a bit more and found the trail! Yup, in the middle of the river. Looking at my map, there isn’t even a river shown where there clearly is one.

We were now turning off the river to climb back up what we had slowly been walking down all morning. It has been a taxing hike so we stopped for some fuel. I found some all fruit fruit roll-ups that were a hit. And with each set (2 per package) you got a card with some fact on it and a mini game. There are 50 total, so kids were already asking for me to buy more. Only 6 packages to a box…might take a long time to get all 50. Reference was made to Harry Potter and the cards with the frogs. :)

We made it out of the valley and ended up in the same area I had gone running the day before. When my kids hold hands, my heart just melts for a moment before I think of them wrestling every night before bed.

We got back, I got a shower and we hung out in the sitting room, or whatever it was called. The ambiance is just too cool. So old, so well done. You feel like you are in an old hunting lodge (minus the dead animal heads) after a long day of hunting…not that I have been to a hunting lodge or had a long day of hunting.

We decided to walk to town for dinner that night. Pitch black on our way there and back. It was a hard choice between The Devonshire Arms and The Devonshire Arms, but we picked well. Sam got the tomato soup, Ben and Max shared a giant AND delicious pulled lamb shepherd’s pie, Dan had some meat pie and I went out on a whim and got the Louisiana (think fried chicken) vegan pattie sandwich. I know, so random but it came with a veggies slaw and some sauce and some other things that sounded amazing…and it was! Not going to lie, I was a bit nervous with the choice, but SO good!

It was a long hike and we do have the family rule of ice cream after long hikes, no matter the weather.

As we walked out I saw this sign, making the legit markings on all the wine glasses I have been served make a bit more sense. They are strict on their ‘how drunk can you get per glass’ regulations here.

A bit more reading, a game of chess between Dan/Sam and Ben. Dan had warned the kids that there wasn’t much time, but they wanted to play anyways. Game was going slow so he told them to be more bold in their moves. Dan suggested a risky move to Sam, which ended up in Ben winning. He even prefaced it with ’not sure this will work’, but Sam was all for it. Sam was SO mad at Dan for the bad advice. Max and I worked on our hairdos while the game unraveled in the corner.

Today was checkout day, so after breakfast the kids went straight outside for all the things they ‘still had to do’. I wrapped up packing, which now entails stuffing more dirty clothes into the dirty clothes suitcase or the giant overflow dirty bag. Each kid has a small packing cube left of clean stuff, which is basically 1 pair of underwear, some recently washed socks and maybe a random shirt or pajama bottoms. Without a washer, we are very strategic on what desperately needs to be washed, due to lack of said washer and space on the radiator to dry them quickly. I don’t know why, but I find it like a bit of a puzzle to be solved. How little can you be required to wash and dry on the radiator to get kids in clean socks and underwear and without them look like he just came out of a bog? We did rinse the pants they all wore from the hike the day before as they were caked with mud and called those clean. Resourceful I tell you!

‘Packing’ done and decided to do the history tour of the building. We had about a 10 page printout the woman at the desk had given us and there were small plaques on the walls with numbers and then questions to answer after listening to what Dan read to us. It’s a 17th manor house built by the Bateman family. Not sure of the relation, but I kept thinking Jason Bateman. It was originally built in the early 17th century with a significant extension a couple hundred years later. So cool we got to stay in it, even if we were in the extension part.

We thought the place was cool already, but then reading about the history made it even cooler. Fireplace from the extension that is currently a dining area. Very solid looking wood beam there.

Stained glass in the windows. One of these is the Bateman crest, probably the middle, but don’t quote me on any of this! There was a lot of info and we returned the packet to not waste the paper, even though the kids wanted to make paper airplanes.

On the stairs, giving their best ‘focused’ faces.

Rumor has it that Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed here, but as most good rumors go, no evidence exists to prove it. If you don’t know who Bonnie Prince Charlie is, don’t worry we have wikipedia for that, and I didn’t either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Edward_Stuart

The Bonnie Prince Charlie Suite is a room you can stay in and it wasn’t occupied at the moment so we could peek in. This is part of the original build with a lot of original aspects still in tact. I remember being in such awe at the oldness of everything the first time I went to Europe. The awe has never gone away. And that this super old building was bought by the YHA where you can stay there and get a history lesson and see a super old room that some prince may or may not have stayed in??? Just too cool.

There was a lot of explaining of what was built and when and then we found this handy diagram.

The 10 stop tour was over. I headed out with the kids for a few minutes while Dan did his programming thing to regenerate more math and sight word documents for the kids. I complain a lot how kids learning apps have too much fluff, WAY too much. Why can’t there just be a flash card one that you swipe through and not have a monkey dance on his head because you knew the word ‘very’? I get that it keeps kids engaged, but so does ‘finish these 100 words and you can go outside and play’. Anyways, as it goes a lot in our family, I complain about some tech thing and Dan responds with ‘I can write a program for that’. AND he did! It’s awesome. For the math flashcards, he picks the parameters and it randomly generates the equations and makes it a PDF that we view in our book reading app and then kids just swipe through. Odd pages have the problem, even pages have problem with answer. For example…parameters: addition and subtraction, 1 or 2 digit numbers, whole numbers only, no negative answers, 25 problems. So you would then get a 50 page PDF that starts with 15-9=?, 15-9=6, etc. Yes, I almost thought of answering that wrong just to see who reads this and would call me out on bad math.

So as Dan was regenerating some new files for all the kids, kids and I played. Ben found a tennis ball so I pitched, Ben hit with a stick and Max had a blast chasing it each time. That won’t last forever.

Around the grounds there were thousands of these little guys popping up. They looked like bulbs and I can’t imagine, if they are, the color and beauty of this place come spring.

Packed back into the car and headed toward Castleton.