The Yorkshire Dales

The Perfect Day

Yorkshire Dales  
Finally, the day I had looked forward to for six months arrived. The drive to the Yorkshire Dales was stunning, the rolling hills of the Dales National Park were straight out of All Creatures Great and Small movies and television shows. Ancient hand-stacked rock fences lined fields of sheep, horses, cattle, stone homes, and enormous barns.

Thirsk
Although all the films and television shows were filmed around the Dales and various towns for different effects, the actual James Herriot Museum was in Alf Wight’s veterinary practice building in Thirsk. When we arrived, Andrew ushered us into a small white building attached to a church across the street from the real-life veterinary clinic and museum. Confused and impatient, I wanted to get right to it. Andrew informed us that he had a surprise and for us to sit. I went up front to the side of the small presentation area because all the other seats were taken. Again, I had hung back, because of discomfort in packing into a tight group. The two seats up front on the side sat alone and I took a place beside Sarah, one of the PBS organizers.

The James Herriot Museum, Thirsk

Once we were settled Andrew escorted a thin, attractive, smiling woman to the front. I immediately knew who she was! Rosie, Alf Wight’s daughter was introduced and she graciously spoke informally about her dad, what he was like, and how close the family was. I had read her brother, Jim’s biography of their dad several times and knew many of the anecdotes she relayed. Here, after fifty years, was my connection to the storyteller and motivator for much of my own work—both in animal welfare and writing.

Rosie and me discussing her father, writing, and books.

Unexpected tears stung my eyes. I was thousands of miles away from my own home, work, pets, and life. After fifty years I sat listening to a woman only a bit older than I, who was a living connection to a modest man whom I idealized. I felt overwhelmed with the consequences of my life’s decisions over many years, the decision to make this pilgrimage, and to be in the real and present presence of the legacy of a man whose work influenced my own. How many dog and cat lives had I saved due to the influence of Alf Wight’s sharing of his own work?

Acting the groupie with Rosie!

After our time with Rosie ended, I approached her and asked for her autograph, like the teenage groupie I felt like. I asked to have our picture taken together. She was gracious and accommodating. I wanted her to know how much I admired her father and how he had played an integral part in my own professional life. I wanted her to know how he had helped me save many lives.
Again, I thought of my own father. Cold, sullen, often mean, I wanted to be Rosie when I read her dad’s books. I wanted a father I could look up to, love, and emulate. Modest, self-effacing, even after achieving great fame, Alf Wight remained “just a country vet,” and a warm, influential father. I wanted Rosie to know how her dad influenced animal welfare fifty years later, in Colorado—through me. Rosie left and we toured the actual clinic museum.

Alf Wight’s Apothacary, circa: 1930s-40s.

Mrs. Hall’s Kitchen

Church where Alf (James) and Joan (Helen) were married–5/11/1941.

Me and my idol in the famous courtyard.

Grassington

Then we drove on to Grassington where new filming was commencing. We hiked up the hill into the town center where we found trucks fenced off for the start of the new season’s filming that was to start within the week of our visit. The vendor signs had already been placed, such as on the Devonshire Inn which was the fictional Grover’s Arms Pub, and the private residence outside of which hung the signs for both the Farnon brothers and Herriot’s veterinary practices.

The start of filming of the 2026 series.

Hoping to become and “extra”!

Hanging out with the group at the Drovers Pub.

Leaving the Dales and a Perfect Day!

I walked around town and talked with an elderly woman who had been born and raised there. She was eighty-two and walked with her sixty-something son on their canes up the steep cobbled street. The old woman was as chatty as if we had known each other for years. I talked with a man who stood above me in his yard, holding his pug over a high hedge. He had just inherited the house from his father who had passed away two months before. The house had been in the family for decades.

We drove to a farm to have a country lunch and then transversed the highest point of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Meditating in the country wind, I came down from the high I had been on during the day of my dreams. We returned to York for dinner and that night I realized I would never be anxious about this trip again. I had faced my anxieties about crowds, the unknown, getting lost, and financial worries. My day in the Yorkshire Dales erased any doubts about my decision to come on this trip. I truly enjoyed the people I met in the group, loved meeting locals, and settled into a realization that perhaps, someday, someone would read my own books and find them as inspirational as James Herriot’s were to me.

Perhaps, through the generations to come, James Herriot, me, and those we might both influence would continue to save more and more animals lives, offer kind solutions to human dilemmas, and bring humaneness to larger portions of our world.

Alf Wight, alias James Herriot with his favorite dog.