Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Gardens

Our wedding anniversary picture takes at Fountains Abbey

We had decided to skip the visit to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire which was on our itinerary (since we had seen the palatial Castle Howard the previous day) and to spend the morning touring a place that Lonely Planet said should be a Must-Do on any Northern itinerary.
Since I do not think that we will return to York again in a hurry, I did believe that we should take in Fountains Abbey and the adjoining Studley Royal Gardens. Llew agreed and we were on our way, driving around once again to Ripon from where it was a ten minute ride into the Dales that seemed in the midst of nowhere. The place opened at 10 am and we were there a few minutes earlier which gave me a chance to become a member of the Royal Oak Foundation, a membership valid for a year that gives me free entry to all the National Trust properties anywhere in the world. This cost me £46 and since the entry to the place was £7 each and the attendant let Llew in for free, we were able to save £14 right away. I know that I shall easily recover my membership in no time at all during the next year.

Then, giving ourselves only one and a half hour to tour thpremises, we made straight for the ruins of the Fountains Abbey itself, a superbly serene set of buildings in a state of complete ruin that dates from the 1100s.
Built by the Cistercian monks and set in a sea of emerald green grass, an exhibit gave us a quick idea of the history of the place. It was very heartbreaking to see the manner in which the abbey was destroyed by King Henry VIII during his Dissolution of the monastries in 1534.This was after the abbey had become an extremely profitable venture for the monks who made their money selling their sheep fleeces to merchants in Italy and France. Walking through the ruins was a rather sobering experience and we did wish we had more time to take it all in. The immensity and vastness of the whole complex is so astounding and you simply cannot understand how it could have been so deliberately destroyed.

Joining the abbey are the gardens that were build in the 18th century by Lord Aislabie who acquired the property and set about creating the water gardens which are meant to complement the abbey. Together, the abbey ruins and the water gardens create a tranquil, almost spiritual space of contemplation. We walked through the first of the artificial lakes but did not have the chance to take in the gardens in their entirely as it is literally a walk of a couple of miles to see it all. Despite the paucity of time, we were grateful that we had the opportunity to take in these sights. Then, we got hopelessly lost trying to find out way back to the parking lot. The map misled us into believing that we could take a short cut and then before we knew it we had left the premises altogether and were out in the fields walking for at least a mile just when we were running late and wanted to get back into our car and on the road to London as soon as possible. I guess this is Murphy’s Law—if something has to go wrong, it will.