England's amazing vet

We went to Thirsk on Sunday to the home of Alf Wight. It is now a museum where we walked around and saw how everything might have been at the house. Alf Wight, aka James Herriot, was born in Glasgow, Scotland and was a vet in Thirsk, otherwise know as Darrowby, England. His boss Sigfried Farnon's real name was Donald Sinclair while his brother Tristan Farnon's real name was Brian.

It was amazing how much it has changed since he was practicing. There are a lot of things we have and they didn't have. Even brand names of items in the kitchen have mostly changed and become obsolete. They didn't have much technology either. Everything seemed so 'old'.

Alf was a vet with a lot of stories up his sleeve. His wife, Joan, told him to write them down and so he started. He was about 50 by this time and had one big problem he could not use his own name; a weird veterinary rule, because it could be thought as advertising. His problem was solved one night when he was watching a game and his favorite player, James Herriot, a goalie on a football (soccer) team was playing, so he chose that name.

On Monday we went to another museum, Beck Isle Museum, and looked at different jobs and life in the 1800-1900's. There was a cobbler and a wagonmaker.

A chemist, which we would call a pharmacist.

A hair salon, and a blacksmith with his big red horseshoe. It looked big enough for an elephant.

And many others interesting collections.

On Tuesday, we (minus dad) went to Pickering Castle. It was big with a man made hill in the center and a dry moat around the hill. We are standing on that hill in below pic. On top was a tower that you could see the enemy from miles away. Below the hill was a simple chapel with some information of the castle. Almost all the area of the castle was land. Aside from running around to different towers on the corners because they seemed so far apart, I liked Pickering castle.

We went into Pickering for some food for dinner. We were on our way to the butcher when we walked past a small chocolate shop. We went in to take a look and saw it had ice cream too. The man behind the counter was chatty and mom talked while I took a look around the store. There were chocolate sheep, motorcycles, pumpkins and even false teeth! We got our ice cream and I tried lime & salted caramel, a local favorite. We got some fruit and vegetables at another shop and when we got to the butcher it was closed. We went home without meat.