Some goals and exploring Yorkshire Dales

In order to create some order in our lives, we've had a little look at our aims and goals. One of mine while I was over here, was to learn to ice skate backwards. I'm now on my way, as I enrolled at a local ice rink for lessons. My first lesson was Tuesday night and I can already say I've learned how to stop. Looking around at the people there learning jumps and spins and arabesques, I may need to reassess my goal - it's quite inspirational. An hour of ice skating a week, plus the ride up the hill to get home - I am going to have quads of steel.

Another of our goals was to see more of the UK. After a failed attempt at setting off our own fireworks on Bonfire Night (there was constant drizzle .. and we didn't have a lighter), we set off Saturday morning to visit Nick and Cat in Darlington. On arrival we met Steve, an Aussie mate of Nick's, and following a quick tour of the town on the lookout for Chavs (nearest equivalent = Bogans) we set off to explore some of t' Yorkshire Dales. We set out from Kettlewell with water, camera, lunch and tape ("Tape fixes everything"-Nick, physio).
One of the highlights of the trip, was actually getting to Kettlewell - we took a 'short-cut', which took us down country lanes that don't fit two cars, around blind corners and crests and down 25% gradients, that also happened to have hairpin bends - it was awesome and well driven by Nick.
.. but back to the walk. We made our way up t' hill between stone walls, with a good look at t' valley that seemed to be scooped out with a giant spade (or do I mean shovel?).


We walked across t' top of t' hill, past t' sheep, over little streams of water that were coloured red from being sifted through t' peat, then down into t' little village of Starbotton, where we paused at t' pub for a pint.





At that point it was 3.30pm and t' sun had gone down (!), which made it quite cold, so we made our way hastily back along t' river valley to t' car.
If you have a look at my photo album, you will be able to tell that I was very impressed with t' rock walls. And that t' rock walls were pretty good at growing moss..
That night, we were treated to a dinner hosted by friends of Nick and Cat's, Jane and Greg. We feasted on at least 6 types of curry (all spices made from scratch), papadums, samosas, chocolate/cherry cheesecake slice, what seemed to be Mars bar slice, and toffee apples all washed down with copious amounts of good wine. Did I mention that we also had front row seats for the Darlington fireworks?
We spent a quiet Sunday with brunch a walk through t' park away and some movies on the couch. We're quite pleased that we've managed to find ourselves more Good People to share our lives with.