Yorkshire.. Day 1

I'm unsure whether to call this day one or day two.. We arrived yesterday at 1545 hrs and set about unpacking. Quite how we fitted all the stuff we packed in the back of the Czech Ferrari is still a mystery to me. In fairness to Anna, she has pretty much covered every eventuality.. I think if that idiot in charge of that despotic nation fires nukes at NorK and nuclear war breaks out, we should still be fine..

I think I will invest in a Thule 754 and 1713 to fit my existing roof bars to the car...

Anyway, enough of this fluffy, padding out garbage.. On to the meatier stuff about what we did today.

Oh wait.. Cooking-wise yesterday was an unmitigated disaster. We'd bought some oven chips from Tesco to have with some sausages.. Problem was there was only one shelf in the oven which led to me putting a baking tray at the bottom of the oven, resulting in very burnt chips... Oh well!

We awoke at about 0730 after a, for a first night, pretty good sleep after dragging our carcasses downstairs, I set to making breakfast, hoping against hope that it would be better than the previous night's debacle... It was all going swimmingly until Holly decided that her coffee wasn't to her taste and proceeded to pour the over the breakfast bar and the floor. It was a hollow victory for me as I'd pointed out to Anna that the cup she'd given Holly was incredibly top heavy and as unstable as an Italian taxi driver stuck behind two ageing priests in a Skoda..

This meant that I was not able to get the eggs out of the microwave in the time I had wanted to and, as a result, they were a little more dried out than I would have wanted them to be. They were still edible though and better than last night's garbage.

After breakfast, we got dressed and showered and set off to the Yorkshire Moors National Park Centre at Danby. As we pulled up, a nice man in large pickup truck gave us his parking ticket with 90 minutes still on it. We parked up and set off to go to the visitor centre, a long row of houses that had been joined together and hollowed out to form a long building that housed an exhibition about the life of the moors, its history and what the future may hold. I had no idea that the moors were totally a man-made feature and it all would have been forest at one point. It was only the clearing of the forest to make way for agriculture that led to them looking like they do now (which is stunning.. The heather is all purple and vivid).

We then went for a good old explore of the area around the centre and found Crow's Wood, a small but lovely wood that had a good few paths criss-crossing all over it.

Following the walk in the wood we put some more money on the parking ticket and set off for a short stroll along the river Esk. We walked until we found Duck Bridge, went underneath it and followed the road back to the car park.

 The day was still young so we decided to ease ourselves into the walking very gently by going for a walk to Strawberry Sundae, toffee fudge, New York cheesecake, Roseberry Topping. A stupid name for a tall outcrop of rock that fell away along an old fault years ago

This walk was basically uphill from the start and very steep and scrambly in places. The views from the top were stunning though (if you discount Middlesbrough.. At least I think it was Middlesbrough..)

After a very knee-straining descent, we got back to the car and headed back to the cottage via Castleton to get some beer and BBQ supplies. I made some burgers, Anna made a salad and we all sat outside and ate food and drank a bit of beer. I'm very happy to say that the BBQ was a total success despite me getting eaten alive by midges before I lit the BBQ. Evil little buggers! At one point, I was itching so much that I debated using the metal brush with which you clean BBQ grills to scratch my arms and legs! It was torture. Once the BBQ was lit though, they dissipated rapidly, leaving us to eat in peace.

Following this, we went for a walk at the back of the cottage. Uphill.. Again.. Shorter though and not as steep!

Looking forward to tomorrow! Possibly Staithes or Saltburn. Or Guisborough forest.. Who knows!? All depends on the weather.