Cake & Tea @ Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal Garden

We visited Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Garden again. This time our friends from the Netherlands were with us. Our last visit was in last September. The bright colors of spring flowers in the abbey were new for us. Stopping by at a cafe near the water garden was something we didn't do last time. I had a slice of Cherry Almond Cake and Yorkshire Tea while J had rarebit sandwiches.

After the lovely teatime, we took a walk in Deer Park to see deer, of course! There were supposed to be over 500 wild deer in the huge park with a large variety of ancient (over 300 years old!) trees. After a good amount of walk, we didn't see deer, guessing they must be hiding in woods during day time. When we almost gave up, we heard that there were lots of deer far down on the pass that we were walking from a couple of strangers who just came from that way. We kept walking and walking. Finally we saw a group of deer near the north end of the Deer Park. They were very active and kept moving around. Interestingly, one of them was a white deer.

There was a wide-open bright-yellow flower (I believe rapeseed) field at the other side of the deer park property. I wished to be closer to the field and take a photo...

At the west end of the deer park, there was St Mary's Church, a Victorian Gothic revival Anglican church that was built in 1870-1878. It is said that the church was for commemorating the death of Frederick Grantham Vyner who was kidnapped and killed by bandits while he was on a Grand Tour with other aristocratic tourists in Greece. His family, including Lord and Lady Ripon (his brother-in-law and sister) owned the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal estates, used the money that had been allocated for the ransom to build two churches; one of them was St Mary's Church. Even though the tragedy was behind the church, the interior was pretty flashy with colorful stained glasses and mosaics, polished stones and shiny gilding. The design is recognized as a masterpiece by William Burges, one of the foremost architects of the late Victorian period.

We felt we covered the most of the abbey and garden, but actually we haven't been around the River Skell area or seen Fountain Hall and Fountain Mill yet. We'll definitely come back there again.