Richmond hasn't changed a great deal, apart from various shops having closed and others taken their places. It's maybe looking a bit shabbier than it used to be, but isn't that the same at home! I mainly just pottered around the market place, doing a bit of window shopping, and just checking out what was where and what wasn't! I had got a surprise when I went to post Morag's birthday card at the post office, because it wasn't the post office any more and was in fact a bar and restaurant! The post office is now in a road off the market place in what I remember as the craft supplies shop!
The market place looked much the same, minus Woolworths of course, and again different shops to what I used to know. Only a handful were familiar and in their familiar places!
If the weather had been less blustery I might have gone to the castle and attempted the climb up the tower for the view, but I decided against it. Shame, really! You can see the castle in the above photo. The tower is on the left.
If the weather had been less blustery I might have gone to the castle and attempted the climb up the tower for the view, but I decided against it. Shame, really! You can see the castle in the above photo. The tower is on the left.
Anyway, as I had been visiting in the morning, and it was now well on into the afternoon, there was some food shopping to be done before getting back to Colin's for tea - and guess where I shopped? You got it. The Co-op! A nice purpose built store... that doesn't look like a concrete block. In fact I even began to wonder if there had actually been a building there before and it had just been refurbished, but no, I am assured it is new! It's bigger than our Co-op, a fully fledged supermarket to our convenience store! Got a lot of nice stuff we don't have!!!
I said I'd been visiting in the morning. Lynne used to live with her parents and young son, along the village from me when I was living in Swaledale. She and her husband had split up. However now she has remarried and is living not too far from Colin actually, with her new husband. Her son is also married now with a 2-year-old daughter., and Lynne floored me by saying he will be 32 next month!
We caught up on a lot of news, and had a look round their nursery garden. They are putting tubs and hanging baskets together just now - primulas and pansies mainly. One greenhouse was just full of pansies. It was nice to see Lynne again. It must be a couple of years since I saw her last.So that was Monday, and on Tuesday I drove through Richmond again and on updale to Reeth which was the village I originally moved to from Edinburgh - 30 years ago! It hasn't changed much either, but there are loads more teashops, a craft centre and a new village shop!
One lovely teashop - the white house in this photo -is still run by the two guys who started it up shortly before I left the area, so I dropped in for a pot of tea and a toasted teacake. Like me, the "boys" are getting older but were just the same as ever, taking a rise out of the regular customers - the old ladies of the village love it - and chatting away to strangers. Again I caught up with some news of the village - we always said it was like Payton Place (American TV of the 60s/70s perhaps!), and that hasn't changed. All sorts of things have been happening! 
Taking a walk round the village afterwards I took in some of the changes, and one place that hadn't changed - the Gift Shop on the "Cobbles" - where I found my friend, Yvonne's sister behind the counter when I called in for an ice cream. The milk for the ice cream comes from Yvonne's husband's herd of Jersey cows, so it was beautiful rich ice cream!Snap snap snap down Memory Lane with the camera! Hap snappy, as one of my Aussie friends once announced after snapping lots of snow photos! They probably won't mean a lot to you but enjoy them anyway.
The yellow painted shop on the left was Gill's hardware shop when I moved to Reeth. The building to the left of the church was once the blacksmith's but in my day was and I think, still is, a pottery. On the right at the top of the row was the Temperance Hotel, which became teashop and village store for a while. To its left was the doctor's surgery, now a craft shop.
Closer up, my cottage was actually to the left of the white house, next to the big grey house. Along the wall there's the bench where we used to sit and enjoy the evening sun. There's a plaque there now in memory of my parents, who actually introduced me to Reeth at a very very early age. It was probably my first holiday destination - ever! 
Now here's my wee cottage - well, it was, for a while -and the house down the lane where my parents' old friends lived...
the "aunties and uncle" - sisters and a brother who had lived together all their lives, none ever marrying. It was once the police house, with a tiny police office at the front and the much larger cell round at the back. It siill had its old cell door when I knew the house. The old folk have gone now, but a family member still owns the house and has done it up very nicely inside!
the "aunties and uncle" - sisters and a brother who had lived together all their lives, none ever marrying. It was once the police house, with a tiny police office at the front and the much larger cell round at the back. It siill had its old cell door when I knew the house. The old folk have gone now, but a family member still owns the house and has done it up very nicely inside!
Moving round, the post office and shop are in the centre of this pic!
And this is the top end of the village, with the old Burgoyne Hotel dominating! Peeping out from behind the war memorial is the bus shelter where some of the older and retired men of the village tended to gather of an evening to "put the world to right". They were referred to as Reeth Parliament. I imagine they're all gone now but wonder if the next generation have carried it on! That will soon mean my generation! Incredible!
Well, I think that's enough for now. More next time, if you can stand it! Me and my memories!!!
Talk again soon.
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