1. Lily is getting too used to this: the pre-breakfast walk in the woods and in the snow. She’ll be glad to be home but she’ll miss this. (We will too.)
1b. After we’ve eaten our fill at breakfast again, bought our own supply of the hot smoked salmon from the conveniently timed delivery van and ‘checked out’, we go for one final walk through the woods. Lily goes into puppy mode, rolling in the snow and failing to find thrown snowballs. We coo and laugh.
2. We stop for a walk at Kielder but run out of path when the lake suddenly appears. Turning another way, flocks of little wild Christmas trees line the trail.
2b. It’s all so beautiful. I can’t describe how amazing it is. (As we’ve seen endlessly over the last few days) the roads follow streams sparkling in the sunshine, hills and houses in the distance catch our eye and John has to stop to photograph a particularly magnificent woodpile.
2c. We stop randomly to eat the pies bought the previous day. John points out a picturesque church in one direction, I point out llamas rolling on their backs in the other. We watch the odd creatures and laugh. (The pies are very good too. The mutton one especially.)
2d. I’ve never been to that part of the Dales before but I will return: it was magnificent. Snow clung onto the hillsides in white seams and everything glowed in the spring sun. As we reached the edge, we could see the mountains of the Lake District in the distance and we gave up trying to describe it because just wow.
2e. The best cake we’ve had in a long time courtesy of Tebay services. (And we had pretty excellent cake the previous day too.)
2f. The wind turbines seem sinister when they move slowly together – or maybe the intro to Rain Dogs is to blame.
2g. The (full) moon appears to our left, heavy and massive over the hills. I watch it grow brighter (in contrast to the sky) for the rest of the journey home.
2h. We’ve see an impossible number of sheep over the last few days – it’s what these hills areas do best – but two sets still make me giggle: the gamboling row of black faced lambs beyond Settle and the whole field of sheep, each tightly followed by two little ones, heading east for their dinner.
2i. Lily, who hates the car and will make all journeys as unpleasant for herself as possible, has unprecedentedly slept for a couple of hours. She’s in such a deep sleep that she doesn’t wake when we stop and I have to nudge her awake to tell her she’s home.
3. It takes Strange a moment of sleepy grumpiness before she realises we’re back then she accosts the dog for rubs and sniffs. Kaufman welcomes us back with a series of meows and a request for food (even though the dishes are full thanks to our lovely neighbours). Tilda though is missing. As the cat most likely to get trapped somewhere or frightened into running in the wrong direction, I can’t relax until I see her. My third round of calling outside brings a clatter in the dark above the woodstore and a little mew of delight. They are clingy for the rest of the evening and I cling back.
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