Yorkshire Dales weekend 2017 (3)

Day 3 - Kettlewell - Buckden return

It was Saturday and Ken gave us a bit of a breather with a walk along the valley floor, albeit with a short sharp upwards loop at the mid-point before and after lunch.

We passed some interesting looking buildings along the way:

The Dales Way basically followed the river:

Eventually we reached the George, just before it opened at noon. Requests for coffees prior to this time were met with refusal, so we opted for Gordon's and Stewart's drams instead:

After this we took a semi-circular route up, round and back down to lunch at the lovely White Lion Inn in Cray, where we had the best lunch of the weekend and definitely the best beer - Buckden Pike, brewed by Yorkshire Dales of Leyburn.

After lunch we marched back and soon arrived at Buckden, where Ken's plan had been that we would all catch the bus back to Kettlewell, which was a little less than 4 miles away along the Dales Way we had already walked along. However, the majority thought they would like to walk back, so it was just Ken, Nigel, Gordon and I that took the bus back for an early bath and an opportunity to listen to the afternoon football results coming in.

My phone battery failed again, but not before we were virtually at Buckden, the planned end of the route:

So those of us that caught the bus did about 15 kms, whilst the rest did over 20 kms.

We had an early start planned for Saturday night's entertainment - Ken had booked us a mini-bus to take us all to the lovely little town of Grassington. We had a pit stop on the way at the Fountaine Inn. When we eventually got to Grassington, we discovered it was 1940's weekend. There was a troupe of travelling re-enacters all dressed in military and 1940's gear. We had spotted what we thought was an old Hurricane flying up and down the valley, but it was in fact a Sptifire and it was now located in the town square:

We had beers in the Foresters Arms, where the locals had entered in to the spirit of things and had dressed up accordingly - girls with silk stockings, complete with drawn-on seam, and the men in what looked like zoot suits. There was then a not entirely genuine 1940's karaoke:

What a great atmosphere! We were hungry boys by now, but still a little sad to leave the pub and head to Grassington House for an excellent dinner: