Forging our way to Kirkstall

 Tuesday 22nd. August  2023.       Forging our way to Kirkstall

For today’s adventure some of the Lads have decided to stay relatively local so to speak, it will be a trip to see the ruins of the rather majestic abbey,  it was built hundreds of years ago alongside the river Aire  in the location known as Kirkstall .

It will be John, Colin, Dave and Mark that will participate in this adventure, either getting there by train or bus. They met up at the nearby railway station of Kirkstall Forge a somewhat recently built construction in this region.

It was around 11:00 am as they gathered at the station, from here the walk towards the Abbey took them about 30 minutes or so, it was a rather noisy experience having to contend with the amount of traffic using this particular roadway.

Once into the grounds that surround this extensive building the road noise subsided and we were left with just the sounds of children playing amongst the ruins and the odd birdsong. After a brief moment admiring part of the structure we made our way to a riverside bench and tucked into our picnic lunches etc.

It was quite a while before we decided to move on from this peaceful place and now head for the museum situated on the other side of that main road , after some thoughtful discussion we decided not to enter the museum but instead purchased a delightful ice cream from a nearby vendor and consumed it whilst sat on a suitable park bench. From here we now returned to view more of the vastness of the magnificent abbey has we encircled it trying to imagine what it looked like in previous times, splendid we would all have agreed . Eventually we arrived back at the entrance gate and sat for a while discussing by what means we would make our homeward journeys, ie a bus back into the city, a walk back along the noisy road to the railway station or something else

We made the choice of Mark taking the 33 bus back to his hometown of Ottley ,whilst John, Colin and Dave jumped on the A1 flyer bus whisking them back in the direction of the Kirkstall Forge railway station in order to catch their respective trains.

Upon reflection todays experience was short and sweet but well worth the effort, just a pity Brian got the day wrong.

Cheers Everyone.