Chronicles of a Barns UK Holiday: Fountains Abbey

Here are some beautiful photos from our visit to Fountains Abbey. A gorgeous sunny day!

Another abandoned abbey ...

... but set in the surroundings of a World Heritage-listed Gardens (Studley Royal Water Gardens).

We spent a good 3 hours walking the grounds ...

... and eating a packed lunch in some glorious sun.

Abandoned swan egg.

The landscape was sculptured to allow picturesque views of the abbey.

100 years later, the Abbey itself was acquired by the Gardens ...

so the primary objective of the Abbey is to "look beautiful", rather than be excavated for historical value.

Compared to all the other abbeys though, Fountains is still in _excellent_ knick, with all the original buildings' walls mostly intact for at least a single storey, and mostly for two or three. So a much better sense of scale and awe.

The was a small museum on site though.

And, most importantly for the boys, somewhere to blow off steam.

Then a visit to The Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds. I find arms, loss of life and the greed of leaders who wage war tiring among other feelings not fit for a travel diary. I'll leave this end of the blog to Ken ...

Thanks lover. In short, a wonderful museum. Glad we travelled to a different town to get to it; sorry that we only had a couple of hours (and consequently missed a good proportion of the exhibitions).

Costumed interpreter talking us through the weapons, armour and tactics of the English Civil War. The armour in the background, full body cuirassier armour was the end of the line for armour development: able to absorb multiple gunshot wounds at point-blank range.

Ben practicing his sabre technique.

... and discovering just how bloody heavy the old cuirassier pistols were. Surprisingly, it took them a hundred years or so to discover that making the pistol unfeasibly long did _not_ improve accuracy: none of them could reliably hit a man-sized target beyond 10 metres.