The Aqua Mosaic: January 2014

Our method of choosing places to visit is about as well considered as blindfolding ourselves and pointing at a map, so it was with very little forethought and almost no research whatsoever that we decided to stay in the Yorkshire dales for a month after a poker tournament in London. We wanted to spend some time in the country where we could take long walks and feel like authentic British country gents whilst we drank beer and ate pheasant at the pub. We rented the below monstrosity and drove from Cambridge to Burnsall, a SMALL town of about three hundred people and countless sheep. The car was great in every respect other than the automatic sensors which tell you that you're about to hit something. Unfortunately the width of the car was only about four inches less than the width of the walled country roads so anytime we drove anywhere the car would continuously beep at us.

The Fall colors were out in force and we spent most of our time outside hiking the trails that went in every direction from Burnsall to the surrounding villages.

Just outside of the village were the enormous sprawling grounds of Bolton Abbey. It was so perfect that it was almost cliche. The ruins of the Abbey stand over a river winding through pastures and into little valleys where tons of pheasants were running around. There were also a lot of pheasants squished on the side of the road, not by us though, as I'm sure the proximity warning system of the car would have let us know.

Our home was a stable loft, built into one part of an old stone barn. From the kitchen window we could see the whole village

We spent a lot of time walking and visiting nearby farmer's markets, castles, and abbey ruins. The countryside was beautiful, everything had that smokey fall smell and from up on the moors the landscape looked like a giant green quilt with gray stone wall stitches.