Water water every where.....

 Walking home last night. The world had turned dramatic orange. It look fabulous and I hoped it heralded a beautiful day on the morrow.
My hopes were dashed first light. As the sun came up...well lets rephrase that...as the light came up the puddles became visible on the road and by 7am the water was avalancing from the sky. We had planned a trip out to Fewston reservoir and try and find the witch tree onh the Otley Chevin.
We walked Monza dog before we set off in the Fonz car as you never know with these plans.

Rain or not we all piled into The Fonz car and set off in the direction of Otley. We have no GPS as there is no credit on the mobile phone. Lee  knew the way. So that was simple enough I thought.

 Thruscross reservoir. North Yorkshire.  This is a reservoir but not the one we set off to go to....however in the rain ...a reservoir is just that. There are four reservoirs in this area.Thruscross is the Northernmost of the four and this is the one in the washburn valley that we ended up in first.It is North of Otley and West of Harrogate. Thruscross was an old hamlet, some of it in ruins and deserted before it was flooded to make this reservoir This happened in 1966. The other reservoirs are much older. The construction of this flooded the village of West End  which was a community around a flax mill. The remains of which can be seen at the waters edge. When the water is low other parts of the village are visible too....

 The work to build the reservoir included clearing trees, removing church decorations and exhuming bodies from the grave yard.

 It is now a nature reserve, with walkers and fishermen as visitors and canoes are allowed at weekends.

 It is possible to walk all the way around...however we were there for about fifteen minutes and we could not have been any wetter if we had dived into the water .....

 beautiful peaceful views and fabulous woods to walk through.....

 we only went part of the way...I have been promised another trip when it is not raining. As I waited ten years for today......
yes. It was about ten or eleven years ago that Lee brought me to Thurcross in my American jeep that I brought with me from Cornwall.. We had Casper dog with us that day and guess what? it was raining and misty and we could not see a thing...I was promised another visit. To day it happened.

 We were all wet and splushing along by the time we got back to The Fonz car. once inside Lee put on the heaters and tried to dry out Monza dog. ......the windows steamed up so I opened the windows to take more photos and the rain came in and soaked us all again.....
Not wanting to give up...we had come this far,...we headed to Fewston. The landmark being the old old church by the car park.....

 There were loads of walkers and other dogs about...not to mention the rain...so we left Monza dog in the car.

 Monza does not like strangers. especially ones in hoods and walking gear. Any way it did not take long to find out that it was still possible to soak up and drip more water....again we only went a small distance with the promise of a return visit....

 Fewston and Swinsty resrvoir are close together and one feeds into the next....these were finished in 1879 and also has a village under it waters. beneath this one is New hall which was one of the homes of the Fairfax family.

 Who lived in the hall was Fernando Fairfax and Edward Fairfax.......

and another Fairfax home called Cragg hall is also under these waters. The fairfax story is to be another blog.....and very much why I am so wet.I have found parts of what I wanted and only some of the photos ....  

 So still raining....we headed back to the church

 I really wanted to go inside. But it was locked.

 This three hundred year old church is St Michael and St Lawrence.It is a very old site and there has been a place of worship here always .

The plan was to go from here and first go to Timble and then Otley Chevin to find the "witch tree"

This will now have to be another day. As I can not be any wetter.
water water everywhere!