The weather is improving all the time with the temperature warming up nicely. And it is a great day to stretch the legs again on the dales although this time the other side of the valley from Settle. Arthur is calling by at around 9.30 to pick us up but first we have time for the Tuesday Settle market.Time enough to buy another black pudding although this time I will be a bit more sparing in my breakfast to make it last longer.And I couldn't go past the sausages made from pork with black pud and apple for my dinner tonight.Gretchen visited the fish merchant again but went this time for a fillet of turbott which is a fish she had not tried before.With the larder full we didnt need anything else and lunch out was ... read more

Today dawned brighter than we have seen for the past few days and prospects of a dry day for our trip to Liverpool seemed OK. Outside there is the usual Sunday activity with people with ricksacks on milling about the town getting ready to head off on the large number of hiking options that you can do from the town or nearby. With another hearty breakfast inside us we headed off with a plan to take a direct route there so we had as much time in the city to do what we want and then meander home via some lesser country roads and take in the countryside. Traffic into Settle was pretty much non stop and one thing we have become quickly aware of is how some oncoming cars cut the corners especially on rises ... read more

Friday 19th June Another walk on the Dales The weather has improved a little today from yesterday and so has my cold.Mind you being out in that chilling wind would have cleared the worst sinus or head cold!!! With the black pudding and bacon from Tuesday market finished it was back to scrambled egg today.Heres hoping the Skipton market which we plan to go tomorrow has black pudding on offer somewhere. Cousin Iain and his wife Chris called for us around 10am and we drove off in their Renault Clio to Malham via a rather windy and narrow road to Malham from where we would start our walk on the dales. The weather was actually quite good for walking as the wind from the past couple of days had died away and although it was overcast ... read more

It had to happen.The dry weather had to break.And today it has!! Well actually its not that bad just a little light rain and its not going to stop us taking a road trip to York a city we have heard so much about for its style. With all the goodies we brought at the market day yesterday we could hardly not have a full English and so it was,Eggs,bacon,black pud etc etc.We left on the road so full we didn't think we would need any lunch. We took the A65 to just outside Skipton and then switched the A59 where the rain actually sopped.We had thoughts about visiting Bolton Abbey but decided that we would be best to make the most of getting to York as soon as we could and hopefully before the rain ... read more

Well,one good thing that came out of the little medical drama from last night involving Eric,the husband of my cousin Rhona,is that I am now sleeping in after 5am!!!!And Gretchen reckons that that in itself is a great achievement. We were of course late to bed after returning from the hospital with Rhona,Eric and Jean around 1.30am. So it was a very leisurely start to the day as we waited to hear from Eric and Rhona as to how Eric had been during the night and whether they felt comfortable in driving back to Leeds later in the day. Thankfully he was much better when they called around late morning and it was good to see he had his colour back again.He had even had a hearty breakfast. We chatted away again about things in general ... read more