Karen Wright: Discovering things about our historic town

The long-awaited Yorkshire and Kynren Escorted Tour with the Caravan and Motorhome Club has finally got underway. We hitched our caravan and enjoyed a few days at Knaresborough to get to grips with how everything works in this new van before heading over to York to meet the rest of the group.

There are 22 people on the tour, and we started off proceedings with a welcome drink to get to know each other a little. We are the only people on the tour from Yorkshire, with the others joining us from all around the country. A good mix of both caravans and motorhomes too as well as different personalities and backgrounds in the group.

The first day out we were collected by luxury coach a taken to Pickering where we had a reserved carriage on the train to chug us over to our stop at Goathland (aka Adensfield from the TV programme Heartbeat). We had a lovely visit there before the coach arrived to take us to the wonderful Castle Howard. Castle Howard is so majestic and is often used as a location in films and TV, famously Brideshead Revisited. We were treated to a slap-up lunch before we explored both the house and the remarkable gardens.

The next day out was spent in York, a place that I have visited numerous times of course but, on this occasion, we had an official guide who took us all around the city and the tour ended at the wonderful York Minster. I discovered so much about our historic county town on this visit due to the guide being included in the price of our escorted tour, it really was fabulous.

We had a free day too after the York trip and many of our group chose to return to the city to take a closer look and to linger longer. We had a run through the countryside and called in here and there for a coffee or a bite to eat before returning to the campsite to chill out and relax a little.

The second half of the week we moved on as a group up to the delightful Barnard Castle, a place I have never visited before. I look forward to telling you all about that in next week’s column. I do know the highlight and finale will be the epic show Kynren, so watch this space everyone!