Step back to join celebration (From Advertiser Series)

Step back to join celebration

8:38am Tuesday 5th May 2009

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Because it has a cathedral, Ripon is officially a city – albeit a rather small one.

Set on the River Ure in North Yorkshire, it’s also a beautiful market town that was founded more than 1,300 years ago, and is famous as acity where a monastery has stood since the 7th century.

It’s a quirky place, full of charm and packed with shops, cafes, restaurants and pubs, with lots of historical buildings and museums, including the aforementioned cathedral, Wakeman’s House and courthouse, and the attractive Spa Gardens. Close by are attractions like Lightwater Valley or Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal.

Ripon market square has been at the centre of the city since the 12th century, with a weekly market held next to its 300-year-old Obelisk. If you happen to still be in the square at 9pm, you can see the Hornblower sounding his horn in a custom known as “setting the watch”, which has been carried on continuously for more than 1,000 years Next Saturday, the clock will turn back not quite that far, but 64 years for the city’s third VE Day celebrations, when the sights, sounds and tastes of 1945 can be experienced on the square between 10am and 4pm.

As well as displays of wartime memorabilia from re-enactment groups UK Homefront, the 101st Airborne and the Home Guard, there’s a Land Army style display of live penned farm animals from Bygones Farm of Ripley, original 1930s and 1940s vehicles, military Jeeps and even a 1930s fruit and vegetable van. There will also be an educational display from the James Herriot Museum in Thirsk, and static displays courtesy of the Royal Engineers and the Royal British Legion.

Last year, attractions included talks and displays about the fashions of the era, a ration book treasure hunt, display of vintage cars and spectacular fly-past that left more than a few of the 5,000 or so visitors with a tear in their eye. Next Saturday afternoon, just before 3pm, the RAF’s Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight is due to return, with iconic Second World War Spitfire and Hurricane fighters flanking a Lancaster bomber as they swoop low over the centre of Ripon.

Before and after the celebrations, you have plenty of time to see what else this delightful city has to offer. The majestic cathedral is the fourth church to have stood on the site since it was founded as a monastery in AD 672, when St Wilfrid brought stone masons, plasterers and glaziers over from France and Italy to build his great basilica, and his crypt still welcomes pilgrims and visitors.

Other features well worth seeing are the 15th century Misericords, an Art Nouveau pulpit, myriad angels and dragons in a trail designed for children, and the Ripon jewel, a gold and bejewelled Saxon roundel. It wasn’t until 1836 that the minster finally became a cathedral.

Visitors to Ripon are fortunate that there are three museums right in the centre. The Workhouse, Courthouse and Prison & Police Museum are all to be found in unique buildings, offering an insight into the lives and treatment of the Victorian poor and infirm, poachers and petty thieves.

At the Courthouse, built in 1830, you can experience what it was like to be sentenced to be transported thousands of miles away, where survival was not guaranteed. At the Prison And Police Museum, you can try on uniforms and imagine the horror of being restrained, birched or confined in a solitary cell.

Sadly, the Workhouse museum is closed for restoration.

Elsewhere, the award-winning Spa Garden offers an oasis of calm – just the place to catch your breath. It’s only a two-minute walk from the market square, and is an ideal place for family entertainment. You could try out the 18-hole putting course, crazy golf, bowling or just enjoy the floral displays.

At the heart of the gardens is a Victorian bandstand, where concerts take place on Sunday afternoons throughout the summer. Carefully-sited nesting boxes have encouraged many varieties of birds to make a home in the gardens, making it popular with birdwatchers.

You could round off your day with a leisurely walk alongside Ripon Canal, which was once one of the most northerly canals in England – and possibly also one of the shortest, because it runs for just two-and-a-half miles from the centre of Ripon to its junction with the River Ure at Oxclose Lock.

There is a selection of craft shops, or you could relax and enjoy a canal trip on the battery-powered Pride of Ripon or a cruise along the Ure to Newby Hall.

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