Continuation of A Surpise - Finchale Abbey, County Durham, 9th June 2016

To follow on from yesterday's post.  Here are a lot more photos of Finchale Priory.  Again, if you don't like ruined abbeys, look away now, because I'm not going to be writing much at all.  The pictures say more than my words would.  If you want a picture of me, there's one near the end.  If you want a picture of Blob Thing - who has already been blogging about his own experiences of Finchale - there's one near the beginning.

You will be pleased to learn that the post following this will not be about an abbey.  I really did enjoy finding the place - I had no idea whatsoever that it existed.  The low resolution one page PDF of the route that was on my phone said, in blurred letters, "ruin", but I had no idea that it meant something like this.  It's not quite as grand as somewhere like Tintern but it's pretty big and in some ways I preferred it to Tintern.  If you want more information about the place, the Wikipedia article is of interest.

Entry was free but English Heritage did at least make a tiny amount of money out of me.  I treated myself to an ice lolly.  A reward for walking miles to get to the place and having miles further to walk.

One thing did annoy me.  I went to the quietest part of the priory I could find to eat my ice cream.  I found litter.  Lots of litter.  It was obvious that a sizable group of scumbags had visited, that day or the previous, eaten their lunch and just dumped every piece of litter that they had.  Cans, bottles, sandwich packets, crisp packets and so on.  Yuck.  It's not as if there aren't lots of litter bins at the entrance to the priory.  It wouldn't have been hard for them to use them.  But that's not the point of course and even if there wasn't a single litter bin there was no excuse.

I am pleased to say I did a good job.  I had a good size carrier bag in my pack from a charity shop and I used it to collect every single piece of litter from the area.  Every one.  And then to take it all to a bin.  It only took me a few minutes.  It was an easy thing to do.  But it made a place beautiful again that had been marred and polluted by people whose behaviour was, on this occasion, shit.  Sorry to swear.  But it was shit.  [Note: I hate littering. Totally hate it.]

Apart from the litter, I loved Finchale.  And the litter wasn't the fault of Finchale or of English Heritage.  It was the fault of a particular group of uncaring people.  Those people were acting in an ugly manner.  Their ugliness is in stark contrast to the beauty of Finchale Priory seen in these photos.  I won't comment on any of them.  They speak for themselves.