Day Trip to Wensleydale Creamery

We thought we would take a road trip today, so we decided to drive up through the Yorkshire Dales to a small town called Hawes. Hawes is the home of Wensleydale Creamery which makes cheese, butter, and other dairy products.
We had heard so much about the Yorkshire Dales, and weren't quite sure what to expect. The Dales are basically a collection of river valleys and hills that extend as far as you can see. There must be solid rock under much of what we saw because there wasn't much vegetation... just grass. As with most of Northern England, there were sheep everywhere, enclosed in stone fences. The area we first drove in was pretty high in altitude, and snow could be seen on the tops of the hills. It was a truly scenic drive. The only difficulty was the narrow and windy roads (which were the main roads).Wensleydale Creamery was a great place to visit. If you are a Wallace & Gromit fan, you may remember that Wallace is a big fan of cheese, particularly Wensleydale cheese. There is a small museum at the creamery, which includes a video about the history of Wensleydale cheese and artifacts such as a variety of butter churns and cheese presses. After the museum, you can then go into the actual factory, and watch the cheese being made! It was really neat! We could see 4 huge vats, which each showed part of the process. The first two vats held milk which the starter and rennet had already been added to. It was being mixed, and you could see the curds separating from the whey (the liquid). The other two vats held the curds where the whey had already been drained out. They cut them into big chunks, and then into smaller chunks. We didn't get to see the rest of the process, but they then salt the cheese, chop and cool it, and hand pack it into tubs to be pressed and aged. It was really neat to see the process... we all learned a lot.

We then went into the gift shop and deli, and were able to sample different varieties of Wensleydale cheese. We each had our favorites, and we ended up buying three different kinds.

We went home via a different route, and found the town of Masham. There are two breweries there, Black Sheep and Theakston- both of which Ethan really likes. He would like to do a tour of the breweries at some point, but kids aren't allowed. So, today he opted for a pint instead.