(Buckden, North Yorkshire – home)

1 October 2022

Andrew suggested that today could read “Drove home. The end.” And whilst that might be a reasonable summary, it’s somewhat shorter than my usual style, so here the longer edit.

No lie in this morning. The alarm was set for the first time this week to go off at 8am. Not exactly early, but I didn’t sleep well (I was dreaming about missing the plane…ironic, given we only had a two hour car trip ahead of us) and I could really have done with a longer sleep.

We had breakfast, and I packed up the remaining food and cleaned the kitchen while Andrew showered, and then Andrew loaded the car while I showered and, with such team work in place, we were out the door at bang on 10am.

The original plan had been to drive to Kettlewell and do a short (under 2 miles) walk before driving home, but that was based on a forecast of a dry morning. Instead, we had intermittent heavy showers, and we didn’t fancy getting wet and then driving home. So we left the walk for another time and decided to just drive home.

The overnight rain was heavy and fairly relentless, we even heard it battering the large wooden doors, and as we drove along the valley we spotted new waterfalls that had sprung up since yesterday. We took a minor detour to get a better look at one of them, before continuing on our way.

After stopping only briefly in Colne, we were home with the car unloaded by 1230, and Andrew ventured off to Tesco for essential supplies, while I unpacked.

We had a good week in the Dales. Our cottage, Mullions Nook, was great, well placed and with everything we needed. Yes, if I lived there I’d change a couple of things, but if you judge it on my usual standards of “was the bed comfy?” and “did it have a powerful shower?” then it was excellent. We did some good walks, ate some tasty meals, saw some excellent views, didn’t get particularly wet, and explored a cavern. Above all, we had plenty of relaxation time and that’s what the aim of the week was. So…that’s it. Essentially, we drove home. The end.