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Sunday 2 October 2011

Settling int'ut accommodation (YDH Day1)

Our holiday officially began on Sunday.

Accommodation:
4 nights at the Jonas Centre log cabins, very basic, furnished in a caravan-esque style.  4 rooms: bedroom 1 (2 singles), bedroom 2 (1 bunk, 1 single), bathroom (bath, loo & sink), open-plan living, kitchen-diner.  The kitchen had everything to survive: fridge, microwave, cooker & oven, if you fancied a spot of cake making.
Our cabin

You had to take your own duvet covers, sheets, pillowcases & towels but for 40quid a night I wasn't going to worry about that. We don't possess 2 'adult' single duvet covers, so Carl slept with Optimus Prime (or on the reverse, Megatron).

Mr Lisa slept with Optimus Prime
It was warm, dry, fairly quiet (will explain what I mean later) and ideally located for a holiday in the Dales.

The centre is run by a christian group, but the cabins are hired out as a separate holiday-let business.  There's no pressure to partake in anything religious, but there is a prayer barn on site if you get desperate and need to go. 






Fairly quiet..
The Jonas Centre is just outside the village of Redmire, Redmire is the last stop on the refurbished, fully functioning Wensleydale railway line, and the cabins we stayed in back onto the railway line.  We got quite a shock when we arrived, seeing how close the line was, but they stopped running at 4pm, so it wasn't like they disturbed our sleep.
Wensleydale Railway behind our cabin


Redmire Village
My sister had stayed at the Jonas Centre back in August and highly recommended The Bolton Arms in Redmire.  So once we'd unpacked we decided to give it a go, the sun was out and the pub was full, but the beer garden was our seat of choice.

Rudgate's Ruby Mild
Half a Rudgate's Ruby Mild (Rudgate are York-based) and 2 ploughmans lunches: 3 hunks of cheeses (lancashire, Wensleydale with cranberries & a blue cheese), a couple of thickly cut slices of ham, homemade coleslaw, a serving of chutney, a pot of pickled onions, a chunk of warm crusty bread and a token salad. It was a perfect lunch for a perfect Sunday afternoon.

We walked off a bit of the lunch by taking a detour back to the cabin, via an off-road route to Bolton Castle and Castle Bolton (one is the castle, the other is the village with the castle) - only about 3/4 a mile away.




Bolton Castle

Dinner at the wrong Bolton Arms...
We went into Leyburn (4 miles away) for dinner, annoyingly we hadn't done our homework: checked out Trip Advisor, asked Twitter etc, and just went in somewhere that looked okay.

The Bolton Arms in Leyburn (a different Bolton Arms & no relation whatsoever) was the chosen eatery of the night and sadly the food was a complete contrast to earlier, their 'Bolt Burger' tasted like a chuck-wagon burger, onion rings were soggy, chips mediocre. The nicest part was the tomato relish. It was a really disappointing meal.

On our way back to Redmire, we decided to have a proper drive through the town, and spied The Sandpiper Inn, after further investigation on Tripadvisor - this was ranked as the top restaurant choice. Bugger.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for your comment...

    When we checked out, Liz (from The Jonas Centre) said that they opened throughout the winter months, and mentioned how cosy these cabins get :)

    Enjoy your stay - look out for the squirrels!

    ReplyDelete