Cabins and Cats
A glamping weekend near York - and the York Cat Trail
I'm not a camping kinda girl at all, but if you've read any of my other posts about this, you'll know I love a glamping pod - especially one that comes with a hot tub! So the Ravensdale Glamping site just outside York ticked all the boxes for a weekend away as spring was finally getting the memo.
We were greeted on arrival by a lovely welcome basket of snacks and drinks; the hot tub heated and ready to go; and the underfloor heating was just the thing after a long, slightly chilly drive. I also loved the interior decor, with beautiful little touches that made the two-room pod feel extremely elevated. With a handful of pods clustered around a small pond in the centre, the site felt secure but spacious, and it'd actually be lovely for groups to get together as well, with privacy in the pods and communal picnic spaces in between. The only downside was an alarm (smoke/fire/carbon monoxide?) that decided to do some test beeps for no apparent reason at 2am, but we sent a text to the owners in the morning and it was resolved by the time we returned.
A short drive into York meant it was the perfect base for a day-trip into the city. In order to keep a seven-year-old city-break-sceptic occupied, we opted to try out the York Cat Trail after a lovely breakfast in a relatively quiet (as it was first thing in the morning) corner of the iconic Shambles. There are a few stories about why the residents of York have painted pictures or put up statues of cats on their buildings, but the one I like best is that they were believed, in the medieval times, to protect the houses from plague-carrying rodents. Nowadays, you can pick up a map from the visitor centre, download from the website, or pop into the Lucky Cat Shop on Coney Street, and set out to find the feline guardians on a route around the popular sites - and into some hidden gems along the way. It took us about two hours, but we did stop for lunch and drinks a few times (and had to re-route when the path along the river turned out to be flooded!). Oli loved spotting the cats hidden around the city, and it was certainly a different way to do the usual sightseeing.
We definitely needed that hot tub when we returned to our base!
As we left early the next morning, we took our time driving home, popping into a couple of National Trust properties along the way - a breakfast wander around Beningbrough, and an afternoon stretch-of-the-legs at East Riddlesden Hall - both beautiful properties that I hope to return to soon for a proper explore!
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