.....up in City Hall.........

Took Dad home today.

Lovely sunny day so decided to drive up through the Dales.

Stopped off for a nice lunch............Goat's cheese and red onion chutney followed by roast beef with all the trimmings......unfortunately only coke to drink.

When we got to dad's we unloaded his bag (and mine), made his bed and settled down with a nice coffee....and he dropped off to sleep. Persuaded him to go lie down and then drove into "town".

Dad lives just outside a little place called Yarm, built on a bend in the River Tees, Yorkshitre on one side, Durham on the other, the main street boasts 7 pubs, 6 on one side, only one on the other and this neat little Town Hall in the middle of the street.Originnaly the town had 16 inns and was an important coaching stop on the Great North Road. Three of the old inns still survive:

The Ketton Ox (named after a beast bred in Darlington) once famous for cock fighting
The Cleveland Bay named after a breed of horse from nearby
The George and Dragon where the first meeting of the company that decided to build the world's first passenger railway (the Stockton to Darlington railway) took place in 1820.

I'm happy to say that I've drunk in all 7 pubs, over the years.

The Town Hall in this blip was built in 1710 in the Dutch style by Viscount Fauconberg the Lord of the Manor.

The name Yarm is from Anglo-Saxon Yarum meaning fish pools and this is where Dad taught me to fish many years ago.

In 1207 King John granted the town a weekly market (which still goes on today) and two annual fairs.

In the 14th century the town was sacked by Scottish "bandits " led by Robert the Bruce, and in 1400 Walter Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham had a stone bridge built across the river which later was the site of a battle in the English Civil War.

The town is prone to flooding and all the buildings have flood gates at the rear, but it hasn't flooded in a long time, however the Town Hall has plaques marking the height of the water in the floods of 1753, 1771, 1783 and 1881. The marker for the 1771 flood is seven feet up on the wall!

Here endeth the lesson.

Das vidanya moy padruga.