Do It Go

On our way through the Yorkshire Dales, we first have to go through Skipton. It’s the southern gateway to the Yorkshire Dales. We thought it would be nice to stop off at all the towns we come across and find out anything interesting about the town. This wasn’t apart of our itinerary, but we still had time before we checked into one of the Dale Hotels we had made reservations with earlier.

Skipton appears to be a very busy market town. They have a castle and I found the shopping center to have some very unique stores. When we walked around the market town we would ask the shop owner to give us some historical information about the town. See, we really enjoy people, so this is our way to break in and start conversing with the locals and possible start new friendships. We found out that Skipton was once a big wool processing center. The canal network from Leeds to Liverpool and then later the railway system ensured Skipton’s success in the wool industry. There still are sheep dogs auctioned at the Auction Mart. There’s even a pub, which we found very delightful and friendly, called the Woolly Sheep Inn.  While in the pub, we couldn’t stop people from talking to us and telling us all about Skipton’s wool heritage. We had so much fun.

We inquired about the canal system which passes through Skipton, which part of it winds around the Castle and acts as a moat. We took a canal boat ride on what are known as canal boats. Narrow, long and very colorful. We made fast friend with the boat captain who asked us if we’d like to join he and his wife at their home for a nice home cooked dinner, unfortunately, we had to decline, because we did need to leave to make it for check in to our hotel. We asked the delightful Captain if the offer will still be open when we come back through our our way back home. He was delighted and said we could come by anytime, that he and his wife would be glad to have us over anytime.

We were so taken with just how friendly all the people were in this quaint town, we didn’t want to leave. But, leave we did, knowing will be back in two weeks time.

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Tags: Dale Hotels, sheep dogs, Skipton Dales, Yorkshire Dales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.