It was from a book Judith bought me for Christmas called 'Short walks in the Yorkshire Dales' and on the front the blurb says 'Guide to 20 easy walks of 3 hours or less' Well let me tell you reader, they LIE! I suppose it didn't help that there is still lots of snow on the tops, and the higher you go the deeper it gets. We were walking at some points on drifts that covered the dry stone walls. The initial bit though, getting into the dales themselves, was a bit of an initiation rite. Its about a 1 in 3 climb on snow. There was much stopping for breath and waving other walkers through whilst pretending to be taking in the view, when in fact we were dying from exhaustion quietly inside. Anyhow, once the first mile of near vertical ascent finished, it all got rather lovely, my knee and Judith's hip stopped hurting and we were enthralled by the fantastic scenery and fantastic clean air. Just needed a dog really. there are some caves on this walk, but we didn't fancy scrambling up the scree/snow combo to get there, saving that for better weather.
The main focus of this walk is Attermire Scar. POI, a scar is the surface indication of the line of a major geological fault, so at some point sqillions of years ago all these rocks would have been moving over and under each other, the limestone and the other sedimentary rocks folding themselves round the harder older rock types. You can tell I failed my geology degree cant you?
Anyhow, its all very impressive and you don't need any qualifications to appreciate the raw beauty of this landscape. Its lovely now, whats it going to be like in the summer?
Some pictures.
Attermire scar with Victoria cave . Left is the top of a wall, so the drift is about 4-5 ft deep.
So handsome, not.
Somewhere up there is another cave. It was a lovely walk but now we are absolutely knackered and about to have small ziz. More like 3-4 hours!
The cat has started behaving strangely, stealing Judith's make-up brushes and hiding them about the house. Mouse substitute?
Another weird thing, got up yesterday and right in the middle of the landing carpet was a child's tooth, I kid you not. Don't remember seeing it there at bedtime the night before. Previous owners had 3 kids, so I'm thinking it has been hoiked out of its resting place by Mr Dyson. Or maybe something more spectral?
The Framer chap, Charles, called us to collect the Deeds that Judith got sent in the post. They are the originals and done in copper-plate on parchment. Judith has an eye for these thing and thought they might look good on the dining room wall, along with a print that used to hang by her desk in Maidstone Chambers entitled 'The new Will' depicting a couple sitting in a solicitors office. We think the picture and documents are roughly from the same era.
Nice eh?
We were really worried about hitting the electrical cables when these went up. I had visions of Perky flying across the kitchen with 2000v through him. Not good. We scoured Settle and eventually found a gismo - not called "one of those things, you know, that stops you getting electrocuted and stuff when you are putting holes in walls" (my description) but a "stud detector". Martin caused a commotion in the DIY shop by saying that the stud detector alarm would no doubt go off if he held it up to himself! Such a stud. We amused ourselves by holding it against the cat for a while but eventually got the pictures up.
We invited Mrs Roberts from next door in for dinner. She is quite a character, 87 years old and unstoppable. As I was serving up she told me she had been a judge for the WI National cookery competitions. It was like having Michel Roux Jnr, Gordon Ramsay, Prue Leith and Mary Berry all rolled into one at the table. As well as knowing the actual calendar girls she does things like icing biscuits with totally accurate representations of local wildflowers. My rather free-form tarte tatin looked a bit pathetic! J
