From the beautiful spa town of Harrogate, after having a nice breakfast at the famous Betty's Tea Room, I took a conveniently bus line 36 to the city of Ripon to visit the famous Royal Studley Park, a World Heritage Site and reportedly one of the best sites to visit in the historical Yorkshire. Instead of walking to the park from Ripon like many tourists, I decided to take an alternative route by starting my walk from Lead Lane which is located along the bus route before Ripon. From Lead Lane I walked thru residential zone until I reached a small river and crossed the bridge, after crisscrossing the farm along the trekking route I finally reached the gate of the Deer Park.

The famed Royal Studley Park could easily be divided into 3 areas, Deer Park, Water Gardens and Ruins of Fountain Abbey. In Deer Park, the park landscape was a mix of light forest and English Garden, the centerpiece of the area was the Gothic St Mary Church and its straight road that cut the park into two and made a visual link between the church and Ripon Cathedral, a really nice landscape design that rarely fine in England. The park was said to have deer, but I could not find anyone of them. After Deer Park I continued south to the Water Gardens, it was here where I have to pay entry ticket. The garden was quite a popular place for tourists, I made a visit on a cold and cloudy weekday in February, but I still found more than a hundred people walking in this place. The gardens were located in the valley with lovely, designed ponds and water channels decorated with medieval tower, Greek temple and marble statues. At Anne Boleyn's chair, the views of the gardens were just pretty, and it was here that I saw a first view of the Fountain Abbey. Overall, the Water Garden was truly an enchanted landscape full of surprised and wonder of why it was here in this corner of nowhere.

The last part of the park was the ruins of Fountain Abbey. The ruin was really big, and many part of the ruins were still in good shape and beautiful. The ruin itself was worthwhile to visit. After the ruins I walked to the Mills to have lunch and then walked back to the Water Garden to see the beautiful landscape in the different angle before continued back to Deer Park and the city of Ripon via the seven bridges route. It was a nice visit; the landscape was lovely and really made me compare with the beautiful gardens in Suzhou. Even though the Studley Garden and Suzhou gardens were built in different culture, they shared many similarities of strolling landscape garden idea, the designers laid these gardens to surprise viewer every turns by using structures or even trees as borrowed landmark, the ruins of Fountain Abbey was a great example of this trick which cleverly use the valley landscape to hind and dictate the sight of viewers until the last minute at Anne Boleyn's chair. After back to Harrogate, I had a high tea at Betty's Tea Room again, a perfect way to end this memorable day.