After enjoying the hiking, it was time to sample another delight of Yorkshire - landscape gardens. Studley Royal is one of most remarkable landscape gardens in England. Rather than the familiar rolling hills and clumps of trees, it’s center is a formal water garden laid out in a narrow river valley. It was built by a politician who took the fall for the South Sea Bubble scandal, an 18th Century financial bust.
In a deer park, just outside the main water garden, there is a neo-gothic church of St Mary's, built in the Victorian times. The decoration inside is spectacular.
A walk leads above the water garden set in the valley below
It leads to a typical garden temple
And then a famous view, which a photo doesn't really do justice to. It's hard to convey in a picture the effect of the ruins of Fountains Abbey (in the left distance)
It's a common feature for landscape designers to build "eye-catchers", often ruins built by the landscape designers specifically to be picturesque. In Studley's case the builder had a real ruin of a twelfth century Cistercian monastery to work with.
