Yorkshire Dales
A word of warning - some of you may be upset that this blog does not feature any Belgian buns. I will try and make sure that this does not happen again.
It was a bit of a struggle getting up this morning. It was so nice and snuggly under the duvet in George and it was all misty and damp outside. We had bagels and coffee for breakfast, and then finished our Easter eggs whilst admiring the daffodils outside and waiting for the mist to clear. It didn't, so we headed over to Settle to start our walk regardless.
Unusually for us, we don't possess a single map or walks book for Yorkshire so I'd had to resort to Google to find some suitable walk guides for us to use this weekend. Yesterday's was great with just the right balance of directions (90%) and trivia (10% (obviously)). Today's however was a different story. I must have just noticed the words 9.6 miles, caves and waterfalls in the heading and not bothered to read the narrative, which appeared to have been written by the famous (but incredibly cheesy) writer James Patterson (under the pseudonym TheWalkingEnglishman). This was all the more apparent to me as I am currently reading one of his books, the sole reason for this being that the lead character is called Lieutenant Boxer.
Here are some examples to illustrate my point :
"As we walked I pointed out a becalmed beck to Serena" (TWE)
"What happened next, I just never would have believed. My father's arms just sort of parted, and almost without resistance, I found myself burrowing into his shoulder" (JP)
"Inside the chasm and down by the waterfall was awesome the first time I came here. I could sense it was for Serena too and I could tell she had just taken in a wow" (TWE)
"I took a breath and stared into those very blue eyes. "You just make sure you're not an asshole, Joe Molinari" (JP)
"Serena was enthralled more as she made her way down to the dropping pool beside the sheer gritstone vertical face which had been hewn out over the years" (TWE)I was fully expecting TheWalkingEnglishman's narrative to end with the writer and his walking companion Serena in some sort of clinch beside a thundering waterfall, but it actually ended with him picking some field mushrooms and taking them home for his wife. Either way, I was glad it ended.
Despite all that, the walk was lovely, the mist soon cleared, and we managed to find our way just fine with a bit of help from the ViewRanger app. Most of the time it wasn't too busy, although there was a large group of singletons out on a group walk who we kept bumping into, mainly when they had got to the best snacking spots first.
The first point of interest was Catrigg Force, and we saw a weasel running up a dry stone wall on the way.
Next was lunch, where we spotted a stoat also running up a wall. We have since verified these sightings on Google and are certain we did not see the same creature twice. I bet not many of you can honestly say you have seen both a stoat and a weasel in the wild on the same day. We are still buzzing from the experience.
After lunch was the cave section of the walk, which was interesting, albeit a bit cold, damp, drippy and muddy, and unfortunately has awoken an interest in Claire for trying pot holing. My attempts to sway her towards paragliding or pack rafting instead have so far been fruitless.
After the caves our feet started getting a bit tired and the sun had got very shiny and hot, so progress was a bit slow. I wanted to stop for coffee and cake but Claire wanted to wait until the final waterfall so as not to have a long cakeless slog at the end of the day like we did yesterday. When we finally got there it was deserted, and had a convenient bench overlooking the falls. We ate some pecan plaits whilst wishing they were Belgian buns, took some photos, and then finished the day off with a very steep walk down the road back to Settle.
As we walked through Settle we realised we'd been there before on our first ever holiday together. This was the time when Claire first realised how good I am at finding food, when only pizza would do and I managed to find an authentic Italian pizzeria in a basement under the chippy.
We spent the drive home thinking about pizza, and ordered a Dominos when we were approaching junction 16. We are now washing it down with wine on the sofa.
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