A pic of the car after the ritual morning wash. In my defence its 1 bucket and a quick once over with a sponge concentrating mainly on the arches and sills, takes about 5 minutes.
I’m not cleaning the alloys. There - I’ve said it. I’m leaving them dirty (deep breath in - hold, and breathe out). Actually I think they look quite good - like they’ve had a light graphite refurb?
It’s overcast and threatening rain so we decided to go to Harrogate for a potter. After a rather slow and boring journey down the A59 and a prolonged search for somewhere to park, we ended up outside Betty’s Tea Room. Never visited Bettys before because we refuse to queue to get in, but there’s no queue today so we thought what the hell. The missus ordered a small cake called a winterberry something or other, and we both ordered a cup of tea. My tea was £3.65 and her peppermint tea was £3.75. So that’s £7.40 for hot water and tealeaves – Fu*k me! Including the cake it came to £10.90 - ouch.
Apparently the cake was amazing though, and it was silver service, and the waitresses were very smart in their white shirts and black waistcoats and skirts, and there was a Maitre d’ to greet us and show us to our table. I guess all that pomp and ceremony costs.
When I’m out and about I rarely feel like the youngest in the crowd, but looking around this place the clientele all had at least 10 years on me. Sorry no pics from Bettys, it felt rude to even take my mobile out of my pocket, let alone start snapping pics. I already felt slightly ill at ease in my jeans and sweater – many of the gentlemen were suited and booted, and the ladies were immaculately turned out in their Sunday best. My unease was further compounded by the fact that Lady M stubbornly refused to remove her baseball cap.
Much to Lady M’s disgust I’d only put 30 minutes on the parking ticket, so by the time we were seated and served I had to go and move the car. Leaving her to her tea and cake, I drove around until I’d found a free parking space. Walking the 15 minutes back I have to admit to getting slightly lost, and had to ask directions. I eventually found my way back to Bettys but the missus had moved on. Marvellous.
Apparently the charity shops in Harrogate weren’t up to scratch so we headed off to York to salvage what was left of the day. Leaving Harrogate we immediately hit road works and inched along for 15 minutes. 45 minutes later we were crawling into York – the traffic was an absolute nightmare; by the time we were parked up it was just after 4pm. I managed to find a coffee shop with good WiFi and posted up yesterdays pics while the missus checked out the charity shops.
All in all it was a frustrating day – the driving was dire, insofar as we spent most of the day in slow moving or stationary traffic, or trying to park. Hopefully tomorrow will make up for it – forecast is good, we’re planning to start off in Malton and then heading over to Scarborough.
BTW it turns out Lady M had no such sensitivities regarding snapping pics in Bettys, so here’s one showing the cake counter
south yorkshire
