Day 11 - Malham

Distance walked: 24km, Time Taken: 5h 30m, Estimated Time: 5h
Ascent (GPS):  1038m, Descent (GPS): 972m, Ascent (Watch): 465m, Descent (Watch): 492m
# Times Lost: 0, # Detours (deliberate): 2
Beer: 1 pint Thwaites Amber Ale (You Can Drink It), 1/2 pint Sharp's Doom Bar (You Can Drink It)

I've included two estimates of height ascended and descended - one from my GPS and the other from my Garmin smart watch.  I'm not sure I believe either.  From squinting at the elevation profile (also from my GPS) I'd put the ascent at around 600m.  The smartwatch counts floors for each 3m increase in altitude, so partial "floors" don't count leading to a slight underestimate.

Anyway, today was my first walk in the Yorkshire Dales.  The countryside here is beautiful in its own way, but much tamer than the Lake District.  It is more rolling hills than the dramatic fells of the Lake District.   The weather is different too.  Clearer skies which means better views but also it is much colder without the cloud cover.  Today it was only 6C when I started out and it got to a maximum of about 12C.  In comparison, in the Lake District it only got down to about 10C overnight and was generally in the mid to high teens during the day.  Perhaps I did the right thing lugging all the cold weather gear around.

I did two planned detours today.  The first was to avoid having to cross a busy A road.  Imagine multiple lanes of traffic in each direction going at 100 km/h.  I took one look and thought nope, nopety nope.  I didn't come all this way, with all my fancy gear for keeping me safe on the fells, only to get run over by car.  The second detour was at the end to visit Gordale Scar, which is a waterfall down through dramatic limestone cliffs.  Or it would be dramatic if they'd had more rain.

Below is a photo of a local reservoir.  You can clearly see that the water level has dropped a frightening amount.  One of the landlords at one of my B&B's in the Lake District complained that if they don't get enough rain soon, they'll have to start calling it the Puddle District.

Walking in the Dales is much easier than in the Lake District.  It is mostly dirt tracks or tracks over grass so much, much easier underfoot.  So many of the trails in the Lake District were made up of small rocks that wobbled underfoot.  Very slippery and hard on the knees.   Below is a photo of a section of path here that is going to be fabulous when they get around to finishing it.  I'm not sure if you can see from the photo but someone has abandoned two shovels beside the path and just left for the day.  It was about 2pm when I took this photo.

Lunch today was two pork pies.  They take their pork pies seriously in Skipton.  I passed several butchers all claiming to be the best supplier of pies in the town.  I bought my (one plain, one with apple) from the butcher who hadn't bothered making claims, but instead had just plastered his window with all the medals his pies had won.  You could barely see inside the shop.  

I had dinner at my hotel for tonight, the Buck Inn.  It is a lovely old coaching inn - well old by Australian standards.  It was built in 1874.  The dining area is made up of several separate sections.  I easily found a table in one section, although the others were all full.  At first I couldn't understand why but then I noticed the smell.  At another table in my section were two young men who were clearly hikers.  They had probaby, possibily, maybe showered and washed their clothes sometime in the last month.  Fortunately, they left before my dinner was served.  I had steak and chips, with mushrooms, tomatoes and onion rings.  For dessert I had rhubarb and plum crumble with custard.  All Harmless.