Nipping into North Yorkshire

So there it is, all laid out and tagged ready to go up on the boards in Ripon Cathedral. The team for the Great North Art Show were so efficient we were all done by 11.30 and let loose to wander the lovely streets of Ripon.

I don’t know if lovely Wendy really recognised me by  my voice, or if she’s just very good at reading upside down(!) but my paperwork was swiftly found, work was allocated a row of seats to wait on and a very kind man tagged each piece with its coordinating number.

Waiting in serried rows

Putting up the boards

As these images show, its quite a mammoth task to organise from tagging and laying out all the artists’ work to covering the cathedral walls with display boards. However I think that years of experience have made it a smooth process. I was happy to leave the work and go explore Ripon – especially as Wendy also gave great tips on where to eat and how to find the bookshop (guess who was with me for the trip!)

Ripon is so pretty, and has the right balance of charity shops and bookshops to keep us amused 🙂 We had lunch at Lockwoods as recommended by Wendy. Fab food set us up for a browse around town…good labels in those charity shops 🙂

Took a detour through Leyburn on the way back, another gorgeous little town.  So we had to have afternoon tea!

Bicycle sculptures from the Tour de Yorkshire, and look at that view!

We found this down a side alley too! (Some sort of water pump?)

And finally the staff in a lovely shop (Milners – I think) let me photograph this – a starting point for a new hospital arts project!!

Colourful cardboard fish mounted on driftwood…

So now I’m really looking forward to heading back down on Friday for the Preview night. Although after circus camping (its a long story) I may need an extra glass of something celebratory to keep me going! So here’s to Ripon and the Great North Art Show, I’ll raise my teacup and keep fingers crossed for sales!