Mischief Night – a Northern Tradition or a British One?

4th of November
One of my favourite nights of the year when I was a child was ‘Mischief Night’ – the night before Plot (or bonfire) night so 4th November. I’m not sure whether this was a Northern thing or a British thing so please feel free to leave comments about what you got up to if you had a mischief night when you were kids…

The Great Laund Oak is no More!

One of our most famous trees, and our oldest in Yorkshire, the great Laund Oak is no more! I didn’t know until I visited today on a walk from Bolton Abbey using the Sunday Dalesbus…

My Dinnertime Walk

Wherever I work, I always go for a walk in my dinner-hour and explore the area widely until I find walks I like. They all need to be around three-quarters of an hour long so I can get something to eat first. This is my current one…

Brimham Rocks

Luckily for me, I don’t live too far from this superb area of rock architecture but I don’t visit nearly often enough. On the times I do, I unfortunately get stuck on many of the rock towers as I find many of them easy to ascend but hellish to get back down again!

Hunting Haunted Backstone Circle

Sun 18 Jan 2015
After reading a post on fellow blogger Smacked Pentax’s site about a mysterious, haunted stone circle, of course I had to go and have a hunt for it myself. I love anything mysterious or supernatural and I also love stone circles. His post is here – go and have a read but don’t forget to come back 🙂

Richard’s Booze Cruise II

For the second year running, Richard decided that, for his birthday, he wanted another pub crawl (for last year’s, see Wilful Wensleydale Wandering post) – this looks to be becoming a permanent annual fixture. However, after the ‘fun’ we had this year on the roads, I’m thinking of moving his birthday to June!

Settle to Malham with Rye Loaf Hill

During winter 2012, while I was still trying to get walking normally again after my broken big toe, I decided to do an old walk from Settle to Malham I’d done years ago with a group from work. I’d done a lot of my recovery walks around Settle, mainly exploring the limestone area of Warrendale Knotts and its caves. While I’d been doing these, I’d had my eye on Rye Loaf Hill – a landmark which is in view from miles around – so decided to incorporate that into my walk.

Wilful Wensleydale Wandering

Sat 12 Jan 2013

Me and Richard behaving badly in Wensleydale! Mind you, when you read the link at the foot of the post, we weren’t behaving anything like as badly as the couple in the news article at the end of this post who were in the same area – we missed it unfortunately! 😉

It was Richard’s birthday in January and, as he is a bit of a ‘guy-who-has-everything’, I didn’t know what to get him so asked him for suggestions. His suggestion will probably be a popular one amongst guys reading this site – he said he wanted a pub crawl!

THE (Yorkshire) 3 Peaks – My Route…

July 2007

After saying for years that, coming from Yorkshire, I really ought to have done the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge (or THE Three Peaks Challenge), I eventually decided, early in 2007, that I should get on with it. I asked Richard if he wanted to do it and he agreed to come with me. Also, it being a challenge walk, I decided to get it sponsored in aid of my favourite humane research charity.

Long Preston Old Lanes (Yorkshire Dales)

As I am currently unable to drive, I’ve had to take my daily exercise wherever my parents have been going for the day. This particular day, my mother was meeting her old Scottish Country Dancing friends for dinner at one of our favourite pubs – The Maypole at Long Preston. The pub is named after the fact that the local maypole is on the green outside…