Revisited Ingleton waterfalls on Saturday with the girls and was again quite blown away by the village and the scenery. We got there just after noon and parked up, then headed straight off. The walk isn't a great distance - four and a half miles - but there are so many steps and uppsy-downsy bits that it feels like seven or eight. Ingleton is built at the confluence of two rivers and the path goes up the gorge of one, the Twiss, across the hill for a while, and down the gorge of the other, the Doe. If anything, the return is the harder part - a really jolting effort picking a way over rocks, concrete steps and limestone rubble. The reality though is that this is a leisure walk - has been since 1854 - and there were plenty of ill-shod family groups, most of whom seemed to speak with an accent exceedingly rare (ie, bloody noise-nuisance Scousers). Higher hills beckon, notably Ingleborough, and I think we shall go back and have a bit of a trog there too. But it would also be time well spent to live in Ingleton for a year and to walk the waterfall path every day, recording the changing scene and seasons. A bit of fantasy.Chatted away to the girls, and Lucifer dropped the bombshell that were she to marry and then be widowed, she would want to come to live with either the Blonde or with me. I pointed out to her that when she is 70, I will (would) be 101, and probably not terribly spry or in a position to pay for her mobile phone or her guitar lessons. A nice moment though - a vote of confidence.
We looped back in to the village after three hours or so, a little bit sunburned and in need of fish and chips. Unhappily, the chipper was shut but there is a butcher/baker a little further down the hill, Pearsons, where £2.88 bought a couple of steak pies (Luce and I) and a pasty (the B). We stood on the bridge gorging ourselves and then went for cream teas back near the car.
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On the way back to base we stopped at Kirby Lonsdale to mooch around with bikers and chavs and to watch daft lads (from the latter faction, naturally) tomb stoning into the Lune from the rocks under the old bridge. The water looks so refreshing but, when moving slowly, is actually quite peaty and none too clean. I swam there the better part of 20 years ago and was never so cold before or since.
Gypsy caravans, the horse drawn wooden sort, were in the lay-by and we saw plenty of others on the A59 and A65. Little fires going and horses grazing on the verges. I think they must all have been on the way to Appleby Fair, which runs this year from Thursday to Monday of next week. One gets so caught up in the little London world of meeja work, friends, going out, that it is easy to forget such different ways of life.
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A horror four-figure bill for the car last week for new oil seals, belts and an ignition coil plus labour. But worth every damn penny and I've rattled off 600+ miles in the past 48 hours and feel totally fresh and rested. Fuck your stupid peak oil production and alleged global warming, I'm going to carry on driving for as long as I possibly can. Parp parp.
