In Dewsbury, Jo Ounsley, husband Phil and concierge Sally are preparing for the first-time visit of Bengal Romeo, whose owner is jetting off to the Maldives to celebrate her birthday. The team are working hard to make sure Romeo will be pampered during his stay and are also entertaining regular visitor Lola whose owners are heading off for an east coast break. Jo, Phil and Sally are decking out Lola's room with a coastal theme and they've shipped in fresh fish from Whitby as an à la carte treat.
In Wakefield, model railway enthusiast Simon George is putting the finishing touches to his 200-foot-long replica of a 1.5 mile stretch of real track he remembers from his childhood in the 1980s. The detail in Simon's work is jaw-dropping, with over 100,000 individual components, all created from diligent research and personal memories. Once complete, Simon plans to break down his model and transport it for a display in Wakefield centre but moving this huge, fragile railway could easily hit the buffers.
Journalist Christa Ackroyd visits the Wentworth Woodhouse stately home near Rotherham, which is twice as wide as Buckingham Palace and is the largest single house ever built for a private family in the whole of Europe. With an amazing 365 rooms and five miles of corridors this 1730s stately home had fallen into disrepair but it's now undergoing a complete restoration by a team led by facilities manager Julie Readman and Dame Julie Kenny.
And the village of Crakehall is the location for a feisty competition when Jonathan Firby's team take on local rival Dickie Broach in a game of Quoits. The traditional northern game was popular among the Yorkshire mining communities in the 1880s and is now enjoining a resurgence.
Aug. 27, 2024
