Nearly all the children joined us
in Gordale Scar in the Yorkshire Dales for five days for our annual family camping trip. It was lovely and quiet and we even had the place
to ourselves for the first two days 😊 It
was also especially nice that my sister and our youngest brother were part of
the camping crew as usual.
On the Saturday morning we all
went to the steppingstones at Gargrave where we were due to meet my dad. Some of the boys wheeled him down from his
care home and we cooked him a ‘campsite’ breakfast by the river. We also took our annual steppingstones
picture where we line up with our children in age order; it’ll soon be 20 years
since we started doing this.
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| Even Buddy was in the right position |
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| This was from 2001 on the other set of stones in Gargrave |
As many of you will know there had
been some flash floods in the north and Malhamdale had been affected so the
campsite was theoretically closed which is why it was so quiet. As it’s a limestone area the water subsides quickly,
and things were still back to normal. It
was quite a contrast to last summer when many becks were dried up.
A waterfall called Janet’s Foss is
at the bottom end of the campsite; the picture on the left is from this year
and the one on the right is from last year.
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| None of the children swam in the Foss this year but most year’s it is a firm favourite |
Malcolm, who runs the campsite and
has always lived in the farmhouse on the Scar told us that during last year’s
dry spell he found three stones that became exposed in the pool. He first noticed them because they weren’t local
stone and then realised they had inscriptions on. All had RIP inscribed with names of loved
ones. This story prompted us to remind
him we had scattered our last dog, Diesel, at the top of the waterfall. As expected, he knew of many occasions where
people’s ashes have also been scattered along the Scar.
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| Our morning view of the Scar from the tents |
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| Just around the corner is the Scar itself |
We were so fortunate with the
weather and, although we did have rain, it wasn’t during the day. We took in several walks and were able to see
evidence of this year’s painted lady invasion.
These butterflies arrive from North Africa, breed and then the young
attempt to return during the autumn. I
say attempt as, apparently, the proportion succeeding is far lower than the immigrants. This year has seen a large influx, the volume
of which hasn’t been seen for ten years.
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| One of our painted lady’s |
As we were near the Leeds & Liverpool
canal, we felt it would be churlish not to take a couple of walks along
it. It was so strange seeing a narrow
canal, even though we have only been away for four months. Also, the L&L is not technically a narrow
canal as the locks are wide enough for two boats.
On one of our walks we went up to
the Curly Wurlys above the Bank Newton flight which was our favourite mooring
spot last summer. We had been lucky to
get marooned there for a while with the closures due to lack of water. We bumped into Richard, one of the
local lockies, and had a good catch up with him but didn’t find Nigel, another
local lockie that we had struck up with while staying up here.
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| Two boats on our mooring at the Curly Wurlys |
After our camping trip we went
down to Wendover to have a night with Ann, Karen’s mum. She had been looking after our plants and had
done a marvellous job. Tuesday was spent
doing life stuff in Aylesbury, which seems to take forever, and we stayed over with Lauren
& Lewis in Reading so we could get away early on Wednesday morning and head
for the channel tunnel.
Unlike the trip over, the return
trip was almost uneventful and, even though we had the usual scan for residues
of drugs and explosives, the inside of the car wasn’t searched so the plants
weren’t seen. This is an advantage of
having blackened windows as you’re not really meant to bring soil into France.
We did have a delay of 25 minutes
getting off the train as one of those six litre Bentley Bentayga’s wouldn’t
start. It was two cars in front of us
and had Qatari plates so not surprising the owner could afford a £300,000 car
even if it didn’t work!
What did surprise us was that it
took 25 minutes before a tow truck came aboard and towed him out; we were glad it
wasn’t on fire.
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| Bentley in front of the 'cheap' Porsche in front of us |
We found out that it hadn’t rained
whilst we had been away so it was just as well we had taken the plants to the
UK otherwise they would have died. Ironically,
we had a few drops of rain whilst we were unloading 😉
We’re now going to spend a couple
more days in Meaux while we work out what to do over the next few months. Oh, I forgot to mention that all routes south
are now closed, or closing in the next two weeks, because of the drought. That’s why some re-planning is needed. It
looks like we are going to have to stay in the Champagne/northern Burgundy area
until next year – doesn’t really sound bad does it? 😊
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