Meal Bank hike using Dales Way

My mum invited us on another hike from an old Ramblers' book. This one claimed to be a 6 mile loop from Meal Bank making use of part of the Dales Way. It started at the Meal Bank industrial estate which was sited to harness the power of the Mint River:

We crossed back over the road and then into valleys that had been carved out by glaciers. This meant we spotted quite a few erratics as we passed through:

It wasn't just rocks that caught our eyes. There were some amazing old trees too:

Number Challenge

How many of you have ever played the number plate game (where you try to spot number plates with the next number)? We did as children and I tried to get my children into it, but the new number plate format doesn't work so well!

I decided to challenge myself to find numbers whilst out and about and photograph them. The only rules are:

• no house numbers
• no number plates
• no consecutive numbers from same source

Here are this week's spots:

1. a vehicle at the electricity board
2. a pedestrian crossing pole
3. National Trust poster
4. footpath distance
5. another National Trust poster
6. road signpost

7.   weight limit

8.   price of a camping chair

9.   post box collection time

10. parking restriction end time

11. bus timetable

12. warning sign

13. travel time to walk to somewhere in Kendal

14. sample house number at local shop

I am still looking for a 15 having seen several whilst it wasn't the next in the sequence! If you fancy having a go it is really easy, who will be first to 100?

 

Walks, rainbows and family #r2bc

We seem to be on a Saturday for reasons to be cheerful now, oh well! It seems to have been a good week here and I hope you all have plenty of cheerfulness to share. For anyone new to the linky we have a few relaxed instructions: 

What do you have to do? Easy: 

1. Link up a post about something that is making you happy or grateful. It can be a list, photos or any way you fancy 

2. Add the #R2BC badge (at the end of this post) onto your post or blog so that people can easily find the linky and join in too if they want to 

3. Share the love. This is the really important bit. Please don't just link and run, comment on at least a couple of posts and why not share with #R2BC too? 

I'll stop by all linked up posts to comment and I'll share on social media too. 

Meanwhile here are my reasons to be cheerful for this week: 

1) Back to normal

Last week I had an electrical inspection which caused chaos in the house as we had to move furniture such as my dresser. It felt great when my mum helped me to put it all back and I got my lovely crystal back again:

2) Double rainbow

We may have had lots of rain but it did mean that we got the pleasure of a double rainbow appearing behind my painted one:

3) Family meal

My daughter cooked us a rather yummy spaghetti carbonara when we had a socially distanced dinner. Lovely, comfort food in these slightly cooler days:

A walk from Wray Castle along Windermere

For the first time since lockdown began my son and I headed into the Lake District National Park. We have stayed away since things eased as it has been far too busy whilst we still have a pandemic. As it was a grey, slightly damp mid week day it was a lot quieter as we drove around Windermere and through a strangely quiet Ambleside which should have been bustling in July. Our destination was a family favourite of Wray Castle (National Trust):

Only the grounds and disabled toilets were open and there were only 4 cars, including ours, in the car park. It was the first time I had used this year's membership card to pay for parking. We were just using the car park as a starting point for a walk along the shore of Windermere:

You can walk all the way down to Claife Station and the Windermere ferry as it is only 4 miles away. We are planning to return to run that distance! This time we were just reminding ourselves of the route. It starts with a descent to the lake shore:

Kendal Winter League 2020: Event 2 Giggleswick

Helm Hill Runners' 2020 Kendal Winter League (sponsored by Different Strokes Painting & Decorating Ltd  and Pete Bland Sports) had its second event at Giggleswick School with the notorious beck freshly topped up by overnight heavy rain... 

Race 1: the 113 under 11s and 13s were lucky as the first ones to tackle the course because it wasn't too badly churned up! However as the smallest runners in the league they had to be pretty brave to get into water that was deeper than adult wellies in places. Some managed to jump it, others waded it and some just had a bad day...

Race 2: the 39 under 15s were the only juniors that tackle the water twice. At least they either got a chance to improve on crossing one...