Lynne offered me a day out in her Freelander and I hadn't explored the Dales for many years. I last hiked there in the seventies with my school friends when we were completing our Duke of Edinburgh's Award. That's 40 years ago!
We drove north from Halton to Kirkby Lonsdale and were soon caught up in a traffic jam behind Travellers making their way to the Appleby fair.
Although we had lived within a few miles of Kirkby Lonsdale until 1964 we had not owned a car and so I was unfamiliar with the quaint town and eager to explore it.
The flags were on display for the Royal Jubilee, even on the cross in the square.
We parked near the River Lune to admire the view and the bridge.
And a bit of bird watching to test Barrie and Sue.....
Several Travellers had made camp and were grazing their horses nearby.
From Kirkby Lonsdale we travelled north to Sedbergh and took a back road to the quaint village of Dent.
At the end of the eighteenth century Dent was a centre for a thriving home industry, knitting socks, woollen caps and gloves, which were sent far and wide. Such was the industriousness of Dent folk, who knitted so fast and furiously, they were known as the Terrible Knitters of Dent. Elizabeth Middleton and her colleague, Betty Hartley, kept the memory of these old skills alive by demonstrating in schools, museums and country shows until they both passed away in 2007, the last of the "Terrible Knitters of Dent".
The Heritage Centre in Dent provides a fascinating insight into how life was lived in the past, using displays based on rooms in a house.
The village has an active community judging by the local notice board which makes use of a couple of shed doors.
From Dent we travelled to Hawes and visited the Wesleydale Cheese Factory for lunch.
Homemade Broccoli and Ham soup and Wesleydale cheesecake with ginger. Yummy!
Hawes was quite busy and the weather was becoming chilly, we decided to head north for Swaledale and the villages of Muker and Keld which I remembered from hosteling days.
Everywhere there were fields of buttercups which took me back to the days when we used to press wild flowers at school.
Beautiful Swaledale, remote but stunning.
The village of Muker and it's Methodist Chapel with a beautiful English country garden decorated for the jubilee.
Memories of our friends from Aireborough Grammar School and our hiking days.
We couldn't reach Keld because of road resurfacing so we retraced our journey back towards Ribblesdale and Ingleton, passing the famous viaduct and glimpsing the famous 3 Peaks of Ingleborough, Whernside and Pen y Ghent when the clouds permitted.
Ingleborough has always been special to those of us who were brought up in Yealand Conyers with distant views of its distinctive shape.
A wonderful trip out, thank you Lynne, and many memories revisited.
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Location:England
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