Home from the holiday

We were in Harrogate for the week, so checked out our favourite places and revelled in the order and comfort of our house.

Favourite places in Harrogate:

  • Bean and Bud cafe.  The best coffee in town, and some excellent dark hot chocolate.
  • Harlow Carr RHS gardens.  The gardens are looking brilliant, with the exception of what appears to be a pretty lame commercial venture with Toyota that has seen one of their cars parked prominently where part of the Gardens Through Time used to be.  Either that, or maybe a local pensioner had too much sherry and went rogue with their driving.
  • Harlow Carr Bettys tea rooms.  A separate item from the above, as you don’t need to go into the gardens to experience it.  The best hot chocolate in the world ever, I reckon.  At this time of year they also do Little Rascals, which are a smaller, tastier version of the Fat Rascal for which they’re more famous.  Compared with their more portly parents, Little Rascals are more cookie-like, and have orange peel and chocolate chips instead of glacé cherry.
  • Harrogate Antiques Centre.  Lots of decent furniture here, but not easy to transport over to Ireland in a Ford Fiesta.