The National Trust lights Fountains Abbey and the water garden after dark on four weekends this October: the 9th and 10th, the 16th and 17th, the 23rd and 24th, and the 29th and 30th. It is about thirty-five minutes from our door, south-west towards Ripon.
We close at 4 on every day this runs. The abbey is lit after dark. Those two facts do not compete, which is what makes this worth a whole day rather than an afternoon: the morning and the middle are ours, and the evening is theirs.
The shape of the day
Breakfast here from 9, or half eight if it is one of the Saturdays. 87 Market Place to the abbey car park is thirty-five minutes, so there is no rush at this end.
Give the morning to the town. If the weather is behaving, the Seven Bridges walk is twelve minutes north of the square and about three quarters of an hour if you come back along Stockton Road. If it is one of the Saturdays, the market is on the cobbles outside our windows and the square is at its busiest and best from about ten.
Then drive over early in the afternoon. Fountains Abbey is the largest monastic ruins in Britain, sitting in a Georgian water garden inside an estate of eight hundred acres, and the lighting takes in the abbey and the water garden: the heart of it rather than the whole of it. Daytime entry and the floodlit evening are separate tickets, so treat them as two visits rather than one long one, and check the abbey's page for the day's timings before you build the afternoon around it. They shorten once the clocks change.
The thing people get wrong
The floodlit evenings are ticketed separately from ordinary daytime admission, and that includes National Trust members.
A membership card gets you in during the day and will not get you into the evening, so book the evening as its own thing rather than assuming the card covers it. It books out, too.
Prices, times and what is currently available are on the abbey's page rather than repeated here, because they change and one copy is easier to keep right than two.
If you want more abbey than one evening
Fountains is one of six monastic ruins within about an hour of the square, and no two of them are run the same way. One is free and unstaffed, one takes an honesty box, one charges by the car rather than by the head.
Byland is barely twenty minutes away and worth a daylight morning in its own right; Rievaulx is about the same distance again as Fountains and the better ruin of the two to walk around. The full list is here, with what each one costs and how each one is run, which matters more than the stonework when you are deciding which to do on a given day.
The honest bit
The last weekend is the awkward one. The clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, so the 29th and 30th are dark earlier and properly cold, and you will be standing still outdoors rather than walking to keep warm. Dress for that and it is fine; turn up in a light coat and it is not.
And it is not a replacement for seeing Fountains in daylight. The lighting takes in the abbey and the water garden, which is the best of it, but the estate around them runs to eight hundred acres and you will not see much of that in the dark. If this is your first visit, come in daylight another time as well.
If somebody in the party is unsteady on their feet, think about it properly. Eight hundred acres of slopes, gravel and grass is a different proposition after dark than it is at two in the afternoon. Head for the West Gate entrance rather than the Visitor Centre if that matters: it is the end with accessible parking and level access, and it is worth knowing before you set off rather than after.
Where we fit
We are the morning and the middle of this day. Open until 4, thirty-five minutes from the abbey gate, and the sensible place to eat properly before an evening spent standing still outdoors.
If there are six or more of you, book a table rather than turning up and hoping, and it is worth doing on a market Saturday whatever the number. The full menu is on the site; the cheese scone is the one that sells more than anything else we make.
