Fast Forward Fountains Abbey

It started off as a beautiful calm morning, but it soon turned into a crazy day. If something could go wrong, it did. I probably shouldn't say that, more could have happened, but it was a day of surprises! Some of these details you might not care about, but I just wanted to get the whole experience down. The link for the pictures are at the end.

The morning bus comes to the dorms at 8:20, but the train out of town to get to Fountains Abbey was too close to when the bus would drop us off. We decided to catch an earlier bus up the road. When we got there in the morning, the schedule that was posted was different than what we found online, so we had missed it. As we were checking the schedule, the University bus that we normally take drove down the road to the dorms. We needed to be on that bus, but there was NO way to get back up to the dorms in time to catch it. So we stood on the side of the road and flagged it down as it was coming down. I've never felt like such an idiot in my life. The bus driver was going to stop, but then he did like 20 feet passed us. He was mad.

We got to the train station and looked at the board. The train for Leeds was leaving in 2 minutes on the platform on the farthest end of the station. We ran and hopped on with maybe 30 seconds to spare. As we open the train time table, we realized that we had just gotten onto the train that stopped at every station between Huddersfield and Leeds. It got us there 20 minutes later than the straight through train that would have left 10 minutes later at Huddersfield. Oops.

We get to Leeds and talk to friendly person behind the counter to see what the fastest way to Fountains Abbey was. We had looked it up online the night before, but we wanted to check. She was no help and wasn't even making any sense. She was really friendly, but didn't know what she was talking about. She was telling us that the first available bus to take us to Fountains Abbey got there at 3:30, and the last bus out was at 2:30. So we would have to leave before we got there? What? Ok, so we stick to the original ''plan.''

We get a bus from Leeds (a really nice double decker) to Rippon. It was a beautiful sceneic drive and I'm glad I stayed awake for it. Some of the other girls slept, we'd been up since 6am to catch the early bus that didn't exist. Once in Rippon, we mosied around the town for 2 hours, ate lunch in a pub, and got rained on.

Once the shuttle bus FINALLY came to take us to Fountains Abbey at about 2:00, we were so ready to just GET THERE!!! The bus driver took the most crazy route to get there. We passed at least 3 signs that said FOUTAINS ABBEY ---> 2 miles, and we went <---. I guess that was the route that she was supposed to take, and we only picked up one other person on the way there. It was a little bus; she was driving SOOO fast down these one lane back country roads. It still took us an HOUR to get there though.

Enter Fountains Abbey. Commence rain. To read more about the history CLICK HERE. We ran through the park, because we only had an hour and half until the last bus out of Fountains Abbey left. We were literally running at points in the park. I really wish we could have spent more time there, but it was BEAUTIFUL!

We get back on the bus to go back to Rippon, and it's only an 8 minute bus ride. We all got off the bus were so miffed. We should have just walked there instead of waiting around town for 2 hours, we could have walked there in a half hour. The bus ride home was uneventful, but we were exhausted at the end of the day from sitting around on buses and trains all day.

Here are the pictures, proof I was there :)