After all the travel yesterday, I had a great night’s sleep managing to stay awake until 8.30pm until the jet lag hit me but sleeping right through to 5 AM.

With the upcoming hike, we decided a few extra calories were the order of the day so headed down to grab an English Breakfast at the restaurant at the Premier Inn. Being so early, we were the first ones there and startled the staff who were not expecting to see two jet lagged Australians bound into their restaurant at the crack of dawn.

As far as breakfast choices went, Ben decided to try the black pudding despite my earnest warnings. After a few tentative mouthfuls interspersed with ‘Hmm, interesting….’ Ben decided that this was the first – and last time – he would be having black pudding.

After these culinary misadventures, it was time to head out for the day’s activities. First up was a visit to my sister’s house that she has been renovating in Roundhay, a suburb of Leeds. Then it was onto a stately home called Harewood House.

The place itself is beautiful with a wonderful interior set in extensive grounds designed by Capability Brown. I casually enquired in the entrance about whether I was related to the current owner or had, perhaps, some distant ancestry that meant I was in fact the ‘true’ Earl of Harewood but was told politely this was extremely unlikely. So begrudgingly, I sloped off to have a look around the place.

Harewood House holds special memories for me growing up in Yorkshire. One not so special memory was when I was there on a school trip when I was 7 years old. I managed to fall off the school playground there and broke both wrists and my arms. This time I silently swore I would stay clear of the monkey bars and keep to safer spots.

The exterior of the house was beautiful and we had a good wander around the grounds still muttering to myself that I wasn’t the long lost cousin of the Earl of Harewood. Instead, we took in the extensive views stretching away into the distance across the estate.

The interior of the house was just as nice with some beautiful rooms with some incredible furnishings and paintings of the former inhabitants. At one point, I spotted the servant bells. I was tempted to give them a tinkle to see if someone would bring me a cup of tea but thought I would be pushing my luck a little!

The adventures at Harewood over, Tina took us into Leeds to have a wander around. I used to work in Leeds for many years prior to emigrating to Australia as an accountant. I took pleasure in grandly regaling Ben with my endless stories of life in Leeds and he very patiently listened to all of them politely nodding at relevant points – poor chap.

After sorting out a few necessities for the beginning of our hike, we started flagging again as the jet lag began to kick in. It was time to head back to the hotel and, instead of the Leeds curry, we had planned decided to eat at the hotel.

One interesting fact was that the hotel was very near to Leeds University which is where I studied. There is a tradition there called the Otley Run which involves walking from Headingley down to the University and having a pint in each pub along the route. There are 10 pubs so this invariably gets very messy in no short order. As we caught the bus along this very street, it was clear that there were several students undertaking this challenge.

What has changed from my time is it is now apparently the custom to do this in fancy dress. Whilst I didn’t get any photos, we did come across people dressed as a giraffe (checking its mobile phone), a cow, Luigi from Mario Kart and Spiderman queuing up outside a kebab shop.

Times have changed!