So after our few days in Alnwick we headed to North Yorkshire, via Hadrian’s Wall.
Oh my word it was totally freezing! The wind was whipping off the moors and was just biting. After walking up to the wall, looking around for a bit, we found a National Trust place on the way to our hotel so decided to stop there.
I cannot remember where this was, but there were lambs wandering around in the car park. I love seeing the lambs.
The grounds had a walk to an old water mill, through some woods, so we walked first (saw some pretty flowers too) and then went to the tearoom, sharing a piece of chocolate and beetroot cake- I’ve never had it before and it was lovely. As someone with a bit of a thing about beetroot (I love it in salads but don’t like the idea of it in a smoothie because of the blood colour- I don’t know why) I was surprised that I liked it so much- you could taste a hint of beetroot- it made the chocolate cake taste a little earthy, but in a good way.
We had two full days in Askrigg- here we drove out to places in the surrounding area. Our B&B was lovely- for those days I went for their American-style pancakes, plus a bit of the freshly made fruit salad. I was very tempted by a hot cross bun one day (there was always toast, yoghurt and cereals out too, but I didn’t feel like I needed any of those extras alongside pancakes), but I managed to resist.
On one day we followed a walk in one of the books we had borrowed from the library, basically finding areas that they filmed at on the first series of The Trip. We spent a lot of time on our walk doing impressions of them doing impressions.
This was me doing the “Ah-haaa” in the same place that Steve Coogan does.
And back down in the bottom of the valley again.
We were fairly near the Wenslydale Cheese factory, so we headed there one afternoon to look around the shop (I’ve seen cheesemaking once before and it’s not something I am keen to repeat!) and we ended up having grilled cheese sandwiches and some tiffin. The sandwich was good (roasted veggies and rocket pesto or something) but the tiffin was so good as it had caramel in there too. One thing I really didn’t like was the samples room- I went in there as it had a bigger selection of jams and things- I got some raspberry and elderflower jam, and some blackcurrant and lavender, plus some for my mum- but there were piles of cubes of different types of cheese and people could help themselves- I am sure some people ate their own weight in free cheese samples, and even though they asked you to use hand santiser as you entered the room (for some reason, for health and safety, you couldn’t use cocktail sticks), I saw a lot of people who didn’t. Bleurgh.
Anyway, our sandwiches were good which is the most important thing.
One day we went to Ingleton Waterfalls- you pay to park in the car park and then have entry to the 4 or 5 mile walk up past waterfalls, along the tops of hillsides and back down past yet more waterfalls.
Some of it was fairly steep, and the weather went from being very warm if you were out of the wind, to being quite cold- layers were very much needed.
It was so impressive seeing so many waterfalls.
We had driven past this huge viaduct as it was fairly close to where we were staying, so one afternoon we parked up and walked up to it.
We ended up being so lucky with the weather too- we had a few spells of rain in the car but no rain when we were out walking. It didn’t last- on Easter Sunday we drove to Buxton and it rained a lot of the way so we didn’t stop off anywhere.
I was very pleased to see I was wearing rabbit socks (Easter Bunny?)- I hadn’t planned it- they were just the next ones in the suitcase! We walked into Buxton, then it rained some more so we had a drink while we waited for our restaurant reservation. As we were walking back it poured with rain again, and I had only done something like 8,000 steps. I had managed to go well above my 11,000 target for every day of the holiday so I ended up walking around our hotel room for a bit to get up to the right number.
On the Monday we walked into Buxton for breakfast in Caffe Nero (no cooked breakfasts any more!) and then decided to head straight home, so we had the afternoon to get ready for going back to work.
It was a lovely trip- so relaxing, with lots of walking, lots of fresh air, lots of tea room visits, and not a bit of work in sight. A very refreshing break.
