6 Weeks in Yorkshire {Garforth} Part One // Sept & Oct 2020

Our first two weeks in England in quarantine were honestly so idyllic that I was a little sad to leave our safe little compound. It was the perfect transition/baby step back into the real world after 5 months of covid and sitting in our shithole condo in Phoenix thru a horrid summer seeing literally no one except for the Trader Joe’s cashiers every two weeks. 

On our final morning we fed the donkeys and sheep one last time and ate the last of our food out in the courtyard. Our host, Julie, gave us a ride to the train station and we donned our sci-fi looking masks and got on the first train. That first one was dead ass, which was nice.

We had to switch trains in Birmingham and had enough time to go to the M&S and go hog wild. Meaning we each got a cocktail in a can, a sandwich and a side. Ha. Although it was definitely awkward to eat on the train - gone are the days of spreading out and nibbling the whole journey - you sort of just want to hork it down and get your mask back on. Also we weren’t able to travel first class on the journey so we had a lot less space. 

It was about two hours to our destination in Garforth, which is a cute little village east of Leeds. We called an Uber to take us to our Airbnb and our Grandma & Grandpa hosts were waiting out front for us - Carol & Kevin and they were just the cutest. Carol had on a mask and gloves as she showed us inside to check us in. 

Okay, the cottage. It’s adorable on the surface, like it makes a great first impression. Case in point, this video full of expletives that I made upon arrival:

But underneath the surface there were lots of less-than-ideal things - a dog shit bed, an under-equipped kitchen, shit loads of road noise, etc. But it’s funny though how coming from such a shit scene (Phoenix I mean) makes you give sooooo much less of a shit. And I don’t know I just….I’m trying this new thing where instead of complaining or getting hung up on the principle of the thing, I just do something to improve it and shut up about it. So we ordered an expensive topper on Amazon because we’re here for 6 weeks and it’s worth it. I bought a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon and a whisk for all of $5. You know? The biggest thing I’m grateful for though is having money to make these changes. Fuck the mindset. That’s only one part of it. I’m painfully aware of how much more is possible now that we have actual steady income for the first time in years. 

And on that note - it is so beyond fucking cool to have actual money coming in every single week. Previously all of our travels had been just with whatever money we had managed to save divided by the number of days of the trip. And it was usually like $40 a day, for the both of us. Now mind you - obviously we had an amazing time. Budget travel is a thing and taking walks are free, most museums in Europe are free, public transport is cheap and grocery store sandwiches are delicious. But like. It is so novel to not have to have a daily budget and to just be over here living and actually enjoying the fruits of our labor. And like when Kris needed glasses? No problem. Or when we went to the pub twice in one day, no need to keep track of the amounts. It’s like a proper middle class existence and I love it. 

Anyhow, aside from the sort of jankiness of the cottage....I mean it really is janky though. Like the table and chairs are just some plastic piece of shit I would’ve bought at Wal-Mart to furnish my apartment when I was 18. Your knees bonk this ridiculously placed shelf under the table….like, what? It makes no sense. The chairs are so hard and uncomfortable. Also there’s a desk, but no chair. All of the cabinets are a little bit askew, the dresser drawers don’t close properly, the shower sprays off in weird directions. And the house is directly on a main road. So there is mad mega traffic that is loud as fuck all day every day. Thank fucking god it’s fall and it’s cold, so we don’t want the windows open. I’m surprised previous guests have not mentioned that though, as it’s pretty egregious not to make clear in the listing. Ha. 

Anyhow, aside from the janky cottage! The town is adorable. And the cottage is right at the end of the main road, which is one mile long. And along it is everything you’d expect in a little village - a library, a post office, a small grocery store, a liquor store, a couple of convenience stores, a chippy, a few cafes, and a handful of pubs. There’s also a train station and an extra large supermarket at the very top of the main road. We get big grocery orders delivered, but it’s nice to be within short walking distance of little markets to fill in the gaps. We didn’t have a car and had no issue getting around on foot to do everything from get groceries to go on epic countryside walks.

Oh, and there’s a proper bangin’ French bakery — Dumouchel Patisserie. Like - run by an actual french man. It’s legit. 

The first morning we were here we went right out to get full english breakfasts because Kris had been basically dying for one the whole time we had been quarantining. We just walked up the main road half a mile or so into the center of town and there was a cute little pub, The Briggate, and yes - the pubs serve breakfast. It was a great setup - sanitize hands upon entry, give host your track and trace info, and pick any table you want. Tables are all mega spaced with plexiglass partitions in most areas, and you order and pay from an app on your phone, so no extra interfacing. The coffee was nice too - you go up and get hot, freshly sanitized mugs at the bar and choose your own coffee at an automated machine, which is also setup in an area with clearly marked social distancing. The coffee was better than it should’ve been for coming out of a machine. 

And the only other time we even interfaced with anyone was just the one person dropping off our plates at the table. And legit, the breakfast was $4. Like a huge breakfast. With a coffee. We’re doing it wrong in the U.S. We’re just like doing everything wrong. Ha. 

We’ve also taken to walking up a quieter road that runs parallel to the main street and going to a pub at the top of that road called Lord Galiscogne, which has the same social distancing in place, but has the benefit of a gigantic backyard area with picnic tables. We’ve walked there for cider on a sunny day and stopped there after a walk to get their BOGO burgers, which were delicious - it made it so we each had ciders, and burgers and fries for less than 20 bucks. Amazing. 

There’s literally something to do in all directions. Also, the cottage is about two minutes off the Linesway walking trail, which is a 5+ mile long trail connecting a few local villages. We’ve taken some amazing walks along that trail. One of the days we walked south down the trail until we hit a lake. It’s so funny because it’s like a dot on the map and you think it’s nothing, but you walk up and it’s this totally massive lake. It was beautiful, really idyllic, I mean it might as well have been the lake district. It was sunny and we sat on a soft spot by the shore and ate our snacks and just sort of soaked it all. That’s what the fuck we were doing on a Tuesday afternoon. Sitting by a goddamn lake in the 60 degrees and sunny weather. It’s all still really quite surreal. I wonder if I read this blog in a year where I’ll be or what I’ll be thinking. 

Another village along the Linesway Trail was called Allerton ByWater. It was the most gorgeous walk of all time ever and it culminated in hopping off the path and into the actual town center, which was so darling, and we ended up at the most insane cafe called Samuel Valentine’s - that was some of the most delicious food we’ve ever had. We ended up making the trek there twice, it was just so good. The first time I had a goat cheese and feta tart and Kris had a scotch egg:

And the next time we sat on the patio and had a proper lunch - I had an insane mushroom welsh rarebit and Kris had the burger of his dreams - look at the goddamn patty of fried cheese on it:

One day we walked down the trail to go to a pharmacy in the neighboring village that ended up not actually being there, the map lied. We had forgotten water and were super tired and thirsty and had to pee, so before we could even think about facing the walk home - we had to find a pub. And find a pub we did, a fucking hilarious one. We walked in and first of all it was dead silent, no music or anything and no people except a gigantic bald man behind the bar with a thick Scottish accent. We ordered a couple of ciders and went to sit down. There was plush carpet and socially distanced seating and velvet covered chairs. Lots of old photos on the wall, a proper pub. But as you looked around - there were all of these fucking hilarious signs like, “No swearing, no phones, no laptops, no tablets” or you will be thrown out. No standing at the bar. No standing period. Stay at your table, drink and talk and that is it. It was just the funniest thing I’d ever seen. But of course - no phones, so - photos. I wasn’t about the test that theory. The cider was delicious and we refreshed enough to walk the few miles back home. 

Another day we had a holy shit show of a day. For Kris’ bicep - they couldn’t transfer his care from the quarantine hospital visits, so he had to go back thru the E.R. in this new city to get things started again. Lame. His arm thankfully was causing him less and less pain, but it’s still whack - if he fires his bicep it essentially just balls up like a popeye arm and bunches up near the top of his shoulder. He wanted to pursue having it surgically reattached to the bone because he didn’t love the idea of having a popeye for life and essentially having dramatically diminished arm strength in his dominant arm.

Anyway - the only E.R. was in the center of Leeds - the nearest big city, and it’s big. We bought daily bus passes and ambitiously planned a sort of day of errands. First we returned to ASOS the bullshit mattress topper we had first ordered (not the one from Amazon) and also purchased a universal TV remote because the one here is about to take a shit. Then we got back on the bus and went a few stops down for Kris’ appointment at the eye doctor. 

Now that was fucking amazing. It was boring as hell for me because I couldn’t go in, but for him he had the nicest optometrist lady taking care of him and the equipment they used was super modern - they literally laser scan your eyes - none of this bullshit flipping slides back and forth going, “Which line looks clearer?” That’s so subjective. And!! The eye exam was $40 goddamn dollars. It pisses me off thinking of going to Target optical because it’s the cheapest and having some dick head stuffy old asshole sit you in a grody ass chair and just have some fucking experience from the 1980s and they charge you $60 bucks and ass rape you on frames and lenses. Did I mention we do literally everything shitty?

ANYWAY. After the exam, we got back on the bus and went to the hospital. That was insane. It looked like an old castle. It took us forever to actually find the E.R. and when we did it was like a proper E.R. with lots of fucked up people and a line out the door. I was pretty skeeved out Kris had to go in there. I had to wait outside and had to move farther from the door at one point because of the horrible screams of this fucked up little girl. Fuck. That sucked. He was in there for some hours and all he was trying to do was make a goddamn surgery consult. He went from the E.R. to the minor injuries department and then into an exam room for them to input his info. That part was all more on par with the U.S. - really inefficient.

After he was done we got back on the bus. I had bought some snacks at the Tesco so we ate those and then decided to take the bus past our house and get off at Lord Gascoigne’s and have a proper meal and a cider after all of that, and then hit the grocery store across the street to do a big shop and then take an uber home. Nope! Ha. The pub was all booked up. We went into another restaurant down the road, but it was just too crowded for comfort and really loud and the only table was squished up against a wall in a weird way so we bailed. We decided to walk down to the other pub where we’d had the good breakfast, but there was a line out the door. We stood in it for a few minutes, but then quickly realized we should go - we were standing in a line of unmasked people going into a pub to do what now? 

Kris was starting to lose it so I said we could either:

A) Get food at the chippy and stand on the sidewalk eating it, or

B) Ditch the big grocery shop and uber home idea and just pop into the small market, grab some prepped food to go and do our big shop the next day. So we did that. And walked home. Ha. It was the whackest ass day ever. 

But! The food we got was really good - a refrigerated pizza that was super delicious and a ready meal of spicy rice and lamb curry. 

Overall we’re just having a lovely time here and are becoming quite endeared to this place.