Better late than never...

 Apologies for the lack of activity recently (and by "recently" I mean "over the past four years") - I expect you can guess what a large reason behind that was. But no matter...

Yesterday, myself and Thom went on a rail-based adventure. It was my first trip onto the Harrogate line since 1996, and I was pleased to note that despite the intervening years, some things I recalled are still there - most notably, the little narrow-gauge tracks that run around the plant nursery next to Poppleton station. I seem to recall the nursery used to belong to British Rail, for refilling planters across the North Eastern Region. I may be wrong?

But anyway, the main purpose of the trip was to meet up with Scaramanga, and explore Knaresborough - a town which, though some curious coincidences, I have never visited before, in all my 41 (ugh) years.

Knaresborough railway station appears to have been designed by a railway modeller who didn't really have any room for a realistic location, but *really* wanted a tunnel, and a station, and a level crossing, and viaduct, so decided to shove all the elements as close together as possible with no thought for common sense... It's great (if a little silly) - and that's before I mention the signal box attached to a row of cottages...

As well as mucking about on the station, we had a walk along the river (via a sausage sandwich and a pot of tea) to the Chapel of Our Lady of the Crag (which was closed). We clambered back up the side of the river gorge to the castle, and courthouse museum (which wasn't closed) - the latter even has a small display of rail related items, among other curios.

After that we pottered about in the town - had a pint in a pub by the market square, and another in a pub overlooking platform two, and then trundled our way back home, via York where we parted ways with Scaramanga. All in all, a good day

Lastly, Apologies for the random placing of photos in this blog post - I appear to have forgotten how to do it neatly!