Friday was our first day without the group of 11 of us roaming the lands and coordinating our plans. First I ran errands with A&A: B&Q - Home Depot type place - to look at vaccuums with their giftcards, bought a little pink guitar at a music store for their niece who was turning 8 on Sunday, post office and dropped Alan at her parents - Mum made the boys a full english breakfast then they went "bowling" - but it's lawn bowling like bocce ball, which sounded really fun! My mom and Kiki left that day to spend the next week in Italy and Chip and I were staying until our flight back home on Sunday.
Andi and I drove an hour into the windy, hilly gorgeous English countryside and had lunch at an adorable place called Country Harvest and split 2 butties (sandwiches) - one w/ stilton and mushrooms and the other was brie with mango chutney and bacon - their bacon which is more like ham... and an elderflower cordial. Delicious! And it gave us more than enough reason to need a good, hearty hike at Ingleton Falls in the Yorkshire Dales! The 4.5 mile circular trail led us to amazing waterfalls.... There are about 8 along the way with tons of casacades, sheep just wandering and cows inside and out of the stone walls, each marked for their farmers. If you're quiet you can hear all the bahhs & moos, made us giggle. It was so green, with rolling hills as far as you can see. Like something out of a storybook, really. It is known as the most spectacular waterfall and woodland scenery in the north of England. The stone paths and wooden bridges did not make for an easy hike - it was a challenge. It was sunny and warm with a nice breeze which was lovely because it was a difficult hike! We even were brave enough to climb behind the big one, called Thornton Force! Honestly, it was not safe lol We crab-crawled across jagged, smoothed over slippery rocks to get there - a bit scary. I told Andi, our moms would not be impressed! Ha. We have more photos of the falls I'll have to upload later from Andi's iPhone.
It was a really nice day to finally spend time together, just us girls. We got ice cream after the big workout then we went to the grocery store for dinner ingredients and to have a look around... It's so neat to see all their different items. A lot of Indian food and loads of pies - steak and ale, steak and potato, fish pie, etc. I stocked up our "trolly" (shopping cart) on their wonderful types of chocolate bars - they are so creamy and soft - unlike American chocolate which is full of wax because our temperatures get so hot that it would melt without it! And the names used for things is entertaining - ground beef is mince, for example. And I found it interesting that they don't refrigerate their eggs at home. Andi made chicken satay for dinner and we had some beers on the deck while Alan was still out with the guys. Their neighbors John and Louise came by when Alan got home and we just had some wine in the kitchen and chatted... I really enjoyed just relaxing for the night. Hard to believe the week was wrapping up!
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| We climbed up behind the falls. |
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This tree was in the woods along the trail. It's said to be
good luck if you shove money in the wood. |
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| Money mushrooms |
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| The boys bowling. |
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| The sheep were *this* close during our hike. |
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