Sarah: Doncaster, England - Grayt hospitality!

Trip Start Dec 27, 2007
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Trip End Dec 28, 2008


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Where I stayed
Ian and Eileen
(Doncaster hotels)

Flag of United Kingdom  , England,
Tuesday, July 8, 2008

From Stratford-upon-Avon, we caught the train to Doncaster, to stay with Eileen and Ian Gray, friends of Mum and Dad's who used to teach at South Otago. We had just changed our itinerary so as to be in Liverpool for Beatles Day, and so rang them up on the day and said, "sorry for the short notice, but can we stay with you tonight?" The cheek! Bless them, they said yes, and Ian picked us up at the train station at ten o'clock that night! We had planned to spend 2 nights there, but we enjoyed it so much we stayed 5. Ian and Eileen were wonderful. We felt like we were in a 5-star hotel: there was breakfast ready for us each morning when we got up (whenever that might be...), delicious lunches and dinners every day, and they took us out to Ackworth to see my Mum's old boarding school. They really spoilt us. We also enjoyed their company very much, so it was just a really nice and relaxing time. 

We used Doncaster as a launching pad for Ackworth and York. Ackworth is a tiny village about 20 mins from Doncaster, and, as I mentioned, was where my Mum spent her senior high school years. She loved her time there, and has told me many stories about it. It was just as I imagined it: beautiful old buildings (est 1779) set on huge, scenic grounds, like a grand old estate. We couldn't believe how bad our timing was however - the school had closed for the summer the day before, and all the students and staff had gone home. AND it was open day yesterday!!  So all we could do was look around the outside, at the grounds and the buildings (in the pouring rain).

One stroke of luck was that there was a meeting on in one of the buildings. It was the only door open so we went in, and the guy told us there was a Quaker meeting (the school was established by the Quakers) and it was about to start. I explained what we were actually there for and he said, "well come back at 11:30 and someone might be able to show you around.

I texted my mum and told her what was happening. I wrote - the school is all closed for the summer but we're going to crash a quaker meeting. She wrote back - well Mary might be at the meeting! Mary Robinson is a friend of mum's who also went to Ackworth. I had tried to contact her on the numbers mum had given me but had had no luck. So we went back to the meeting at 11:30 and the nice guy led us through, and I asked him,  "you don't have a Mary Robinson in there do you?" and he said, "well we do as a matter of fact, and when I told her there were a couple of Kiwis waiting outside in the rain she said she wondered if she had met them when she was in England!" Mary had been out to NZ in 1994 and had stayed with us for a few days. So there she was, what a coincidence, and it was really nice to see her.

One of our days in Doncaster we took a train up to York to see the city. Everyone had said that York Minster (like a cathedral) was great, and mum had told me about Jorvik, a viking centre where you can take a ride underground through an old viking town. York was at one point a viking settlement, which I didn't know, and it was pretty cool to ride on this carriage-thing through a recreation of it.

Our last night with the Grays, (we were sad to be leaving) we actually made them a meal: a spinach and feta lasagne and one of my favourite childhood puddings - a berry buckle, with blackcurrants from Ian and Eileen's garden.
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