J&J's European Adventure

23 August

Askrigg, England

The clouds were gathering as we finished breakfast and caught a bus for the village of Askrigg, about five miles away. This is the village that doubled for Darrowby on All Creatures Great & Small. We saw the main characters' house and the local pub, bought a sandwich at a little shop, asked directions at another, and started our hike through the Dales back to Hawes.

About a mile into the trek, we stopped to put on our rain pants. Our map showed us passing through a couple of small settlements, and we thought there might be a pub along the way in which to seek shelter. The settlements turned out to be clusters of farm buildings that somehow rated having a name. We shouldn't have been surprised, because about everything here seems to have a name: Rosegill House, Glenview Cottage, and Luke's Barn (I swear I'm not making that one up). So onward we trudged, over hill, over dale, through about a hundred little bitty gates and stone wall gaps, as the mist became light rain which gave way to just plain old rain. We couldn't work up enthusiasm for eating lunch out in the open in the rain, so we pushed on the entire 6 1/2 miles back to the hotel, where we ate our sandwich and started drying our boots.

After about an hour of R&R, we decided to venture back out for a tour of the local cheese factory. Wensleydale Cheese is a local specialty that has been produced in this valley for about 300 years, if I remember correctly. I know monks started the process way back when. It's also the favorite cheese of Wallace & Gromit, highly popular claymation characters. We looked through the cheese museum, which was surprisingly interesting, and sampled twenty different cheeses, the majority of which were very tasty. The neighborhood bakery provided us with supper and we settled in with the telly for the night.

Daily miles: 8.2

Expenses: £166.70 (2 nights at Herriots, food)

Askrigg