On what was a beautiful crystal clear winters morning, it was so sad to stop and see a place that was once graced by great brush of William Turner is now nothing more than a weekend roadside stopover for visiting people to Harrogate or Knaresborough. Even on this weekday morning when I pulled over, the place was closed with nowhere to park, but I was undeterred and with a willingness to see what laid beyond the ‘KEEP OUT ..”CLOSED” gate, I armed myself with the ‘trusty’ camera I ventured/vaulted over the gate.
What awaited me was nothing short of magical, I could see why Edward Lascelles, 1st Earl of Harewood commissioned Turner to produced his two serene landscape paintings of the place, the lake was a Titanic’esque‘ mill pond and the rocks had an amazing winter colour with some crazy shades of mutant lichen on them.
I managed to take only a brief amounts of photographs, but in my opinion this place is such a hidden gem on the door step of our County of Yorkshire and deserves more than just a fleeting ‘urban’ visit from a passerby like me and my camera….
Geek Carl 