49. North Yorkshire

I've been going to Sowerby and Thirsk in North Yorkshire since Adam were a lad (to borrow a marvellous local phrase). Thirsk is James Herriot's town. This weekend we did not visit the Herriot Museum as we did it last time we were up - instead we visited the beautiful spa town of Harrogate, we walked up and down what felt like a mountain, and we (or mainly I) drivelled on about the daffodils, but above all we looked about us and revelled in some of the most spectacular scenery in the British Isles.

Herself drove the car up Sutton Bank, which is a hill with a 1 in 4 gradient. You have to change gear even in a 3-litre automatic Mercedes. It's that steep. Our friend Liz can get a horse box up there but she is Proper Yorkshire and therefore redoubtable in every way. Driving up Sutton Bank is fun, but when you get to the top you can pretty much see the rest of Yorkshire, which is even better.

We visited St Gregory's Minster, which is a tiny little church dating from Saxon times, with two large Saxon mausoleums inside the church and stones dating from 750AD. We walked to a place called Hold Cauldron, which was the bottom of a steep valley lined almost entirely with ancient silver birches. In the Cauldron was an old water mill with the river still rushing through it. There was nothing else there, bar the pheasants.

North Yorkshire is a long way to go for the weekend, but to visit a dear friend with two adorable Jack Russells, eat well, drink well, walk up hill and down dale, look at the daffs, run along the beck listening to the water gurgling past, pat the neck of the sweet pony, sit in the sun, and all in the company of Herself and the Parent - in my view it's well worth the trip.