Ee by gum

Yorkshire, Yorkshire, ee by gum
We’re the Rooke family and we like to have fun
We travel in style in our yellow camper van
So watch out Yorkshire here we come

And so with the obligatory holiday song penned and words committed to memory we were off for our adventure in the land of the White Rose.

To be honest I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Yorkshire. I had vague memories of a family holiday as a child but really I was pretty much a blank canvas. We were staying on a farm which promised to let the kids feed the animals every day – and this turned out to be the highlight for both Emily and Niomi…Donald Duck; Mad Mable the hen; a pair of angry geese; Buster, Angie, Annie and Chloe the pigs; Molly and Mandy the lambs; and about 50 hens were all duly fed every morning by the girls and eggs were collected, graded and packed. It kicked off every day in style. Then there was the swimming…the farm had a quite simply superb indoor swimming pool which could be booked to ourselves for up to an hour and a half every day – it even had a sauna and steam room for us older children. So the pool, came a close second in the highlights.

Eggsperts

Milk-tastic

Buster the NBF

Private swimming apart from the ducks

These 2 things alone filled up quite a bit of the action, but we also packed in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Castle Hill, Cannon Hall Farm, the National Coal Mining Museum, pony riding, Yorkshire Yummy Ice Cream and a couple of walks on the Kirklees Way. And all these things added up to a great holiday full of simple holiday fun. The sun shone most of the time, the van pootled up and down through winding country lanes and idyllic Yorkshire villages, the family sung, laughed and enjoyed the fresh air, and we ate great home cooked food and local produce. A real recipe for success…

 Worried about journey down pit

Leaving the others behind 

 Sheep racing

Sister racing

 Peace at the YSP

Mummy-daughter time

Fake strop on top of Castle Hill 

 Hide and seek

Stand off

Horse joy

Sister bond

And to top it off we had a lovely couple of days down in Birmingham with my Mum and Dad, and a quick overnighter near Preston with friends Edward and Ewa (despite torrential weather from the Manchester tornado making for an epic journey).

 Ice cream face

Ice cream face

Half the Rooke clan

Now it’s back to work for 5 days before we’re off again to North Berwick…Phew. Ee by gum indeed.