North Yorkshire weekend walking

We went to Yorkshire at the weekend with the hill-walking club. To be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to going, because I hadn't really planned what I was going to do or researched the area. I also had to make arrangements for Ally to look after the cats until he left for London on Sunday morning, and since Floof is still not allowed into the back of the house unaccompanied because of her recently developed escape skills, he would have to be extra vigilant. And with Ally leaving on Sunday without us being able to see him off, the prospective weekend felt a bit hassling before we even set off. 

However as with many things that I haven't looked forward to,  it turned out to be a tremendous experience! We arrived at our hotel in Hawes on Friday evening and met up with the rest of the group. What a lovely village! We went out for a wee walk before bedtime and saw lots of lovely shops and cafés as well, and the houses are very quaint and traditional with a river rushing through the middle of the village.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast, I joined Susan and Debbie for a walk to nearby Dod Fell on the Pennine Way. We had such a fun time. Very near the start of the walk we took a wrong turning and walked up an adjoining valley instead of getting onto the way-marked path. It really didn't matter because we had a great walk anyway, of about 9 km, although we found ourselves having to climb over a lot of gates and wade through many muddy puddles. As we got higher there was quite a bit of snow on the ground on top of the mud! We decided to leave Great Dod for another day.

We made our way back to the road and were on our way back to the village when a police car approached and stopped beside us. My first thought was that we had been seen trespassing on a nearby farm - which we probably had been! However it turned out that the police officers were representing "Operation Owl" which is a campaign to prevent illegal trapping of birds of prey in North Yorkshire. They give us leaflets and chatted away - they were very friendly and even offered us a lift back to the village in the police car! We thanked them but declined, because we didn't want to cut our walk short. However just after they left it started to rain quite heavily. And then, to our surprise, along came ANOTHER police car! This time the police officer was accompanied by someone from the R.S.P.B. and again they were very friendly and offered us a lift - and this time we said yes! 

So we arrived at the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes by police car, which was very exciting, and we were even asked to pose for an "Operation Owl" photograph for the R.S.P.B. website!  The Creamery was fantastic and Iris arrived just as we were sitting down in the café to eat some delicious scones made with Wensleydale cheese. There was a cheese-tasting room as well, with loads of samples. Later on, when we related our adventures to the others in the bar back at the hotel, Bob quipped "They went for Great Dod but they got Great Plod!" which I thought was very funny.