Wensleydale

A couple of weeks ago Sue and I spent a couple of days visiting friends in the village of Middleham in Wensleydale, which is part of the Yorkshire Dales (although just outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park).
On one of the days we visited two different ruins dating from the 12th Century:- Jervaulx Abbey, which was completed in the middle of that century, and Middleham Castle, which came a bit later, the building not being started until the year 1190 AD.
The castle was owned and lived in by various different powerful people over the years, with probably the most notable being the future King Richard III (although it is thought that he spent little or no time there after becoming king). One of the pubs in Middleham is named in his honour.
The abbey, for most of its life until it was destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th Century, was owned and lived in by the Cistercian order of monks.

Jervaulx Abbey, East Witton, North Yorkshire
(Photo © Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jervaulx_Abbey)

The geology of the Yorkshire Dales is dominated by limestone, and this results in quite a lot of interesting plants and we saw a few while we were there - one of these was one I had never seen before - Giant Bellflower (Campanula latifolia), and I got quite excited about it. While writing this blog-post I discovered that there is a pub in Selby, just south of York, called The Giant Bellflower. I would like to visit it one day (just because of the name) although I'm slightly nervous as it is a Wetherspoons pub and has had some pretty impressively bad reviews on TripAdvisor over the last few years.

Giant Bellflower (Campanula latifolia)
Although usually the flowers are purple,
most of the ones we saw were whitish.

A botanist (me) identifying Giant Bellflower
(see the leaves in the bottom left of the picture)

Betony (Betonica officinalis) - not a very rare plant, and one that I have seen in many parts of England,
but never as abundantly as it was growing in the valley of the River Cover, near Middleham.
There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of plants.Although the flowers might look,
to the lay-person, a bit 'orchid-like', it is actually in the Mint family

Not every plant in the Dales is a rare or unusual one! I spent some time trying to turn this into something
rare, but had to admit in the end that it was Common Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus),
an extremely common plant, which you probably have growing within 500 metres of you, wherever
you are now (if you're in Great Britain or Ireland, that is)