A bonus today: a visit to a place I didn’t even know was on our itinerary: Byland Abbey. This is one of the structures destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII’s power grab. The king wanted to remove all vestiges of Catholicism from the country, but first he snatched from the monasteries anything of value: gold chalices and monstrances, even the lead from the stained glass windows.

Earlier in the week we toured St. Mary’s Abbey in York, another pilfered monastery. But Byland was better preserved and in a more stunning locale — appearing like an apparition in the North York Moors.

We saw the church, library, warming room, kitchen and refectory. It was uncharacteristically sunny and warm, making it easy to linger on the grass and admire the tiles and the stones.

I tried to imagine what the place was like in the 12th century, hundreds of years before it was destroyed. Another world, of which we have only the vestiges, but enough to set the mind spinning.