Friday 30 April 2010

Dales Diary - Saturday 24 April


Roots, Rigg's Beck (Pentel Brushpen, watercolour, A4 sketchbook)

Our two cars met up in Bedale on Friday for a sandwich and to collect the keys. With only a short diversion to the Black Sheep Brewery at Masham for essential supplies (Golden Sheep and Riggwelter), we were soon being astonished by the house that is The Rookery. It's massive. It was once the stable block of the old house, which says something about how big the house must have been.

The rest of the day was spent settling in and wandering round the house and grounds, but the following day, Saturday, I started out with a determination to get at least one drawing done each day. Not particularly ambitious, perhaps, but for me, who likes to walk around a lot taking photographs, it's adequate.

I started with a gentle walk (new boots!) up Rigg's Beck that runs through the farmland round The Rookery. New-born lambs everywhere and an unfortunate number of dead and decaying rabbits. I wondered about the rabbits. Were they being shot and left to rot? Sadly, I suspect myxomatosis is to blame.

The day's one drawing quota was achieved with this drawing of roots falling down into the beck.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're having a fine time on your trip, Harry. I'm glad to see that.

--
Bruce T.

April Jarocka said...

Lovely to hear you got your priorities right and stocked up on supplies first...lol
Sounds like you had a good time.

Caroline said...

Hope it went well, look forward to seeing the drawings.... you surely must be a huge fan of t'Yorkshire Dales, now?!

harry bell said...

Bruce - Thanks, Bruce!

April - it's important to soak up a flavour of the area.

Caroline - it was a great week and I'm sure we'll be going back to the Dales, possibly even back to The Rookery.