0 Bolton Abbey (the first visit)

Today we took a trip over to Bolton Abbey, an old priory ruin about 15 minutes away.  It's beautiful, and the dogs are allowed on most of the property, so it seemed like a great idea for a great spring day.

We packed up towels for the dogs (there's a river), water bottles for all of us, treats and a tennis ball for good behavior bribes, wellies in case the trails were mucky, and cameras.  I took Simon, my 35mm, Sylvester, my DSLR, and for good measure I threw in the little Powershot.   I tell you these details because... major fail.  I didn't bring film for Simon and I left Sylvester's memory card in the computer.  I still had the Powershot, so I managed to get a few pics before the icing on the cake, the batteries went low.  We parked and started on a path.  These pictures only show a small bit of what we saw, I will post again when we go back another time.  There are also several bridges across the estate, but no pics of those because my energy was occupied convincing Scaredy-Pants Max that there is no troll under the bridges. (add bridges to his rapidly increasing list of fears)

This tree was early on our path and if you look closely it is covered in small "silver" or what Americans would call "coins".   We're not sure of the significance, but hopefully we'll find out while we live here.  There was a second tree further on the path with similar silver embedded. 

A lot of the path was wooded, but we came up a hill to a great view.  Our car is back on the upper-middle right, to give you an idea of where we are.  The priory is far to the left of this.  

Our first view of the priory.  We walked up another hill and suddenly, there it was. 

Walking up to the priory.  Some of the gravestones are quite recent, others centuries old.

The cloisters area.  Max and I are standing where secondary storage rooms once were.

 Just had to put in a picture of Sloan traipsing through the church.  Max was with me, so no pics of him here.  Besides, he was collapsed in a mud spot to cool down!

Pretty graveyard.

Sloan playing fetch in the river.

Max was a little impolite to some of the residents... he chased the ducks.  Ineffectively, of course.  One of the terrifying bridges is in the background.

This area seemed to be an unlabeled off leash zone.  Most of the areas had leash signs, but here most dogs in this grassy area were off leash and enjoying the day.  The river is directly behind me.

The entry to the path we took had three options: walk over the wall to the left, a gate to the right of the image (how Max went through) or this little passage hole we concluded is for dogs.  With a little coaxing Sloan obliged us.

We walked about 2.7 miles (Paul plotted it on www.mapmywalk.com) and feel like we barely covered anything.   Both dogs are currently passed out on the couches behind me, so I think it was a successful day!