The picturesque yomp through the Lancashire countryside didn't go quite as I had envisaged yesterday, splendid vistas from atop of the Yorkshire dales to the east and Morcombe bay and the Lake district to the West.
I downloaded a route from the "happy hiker.com), and it started by taking us to the wrong village to park the cars, upon whilst parking my daughter let the dog out the car only for it to be almost immediately mowed down by an oncoming land rover.
Unperturbed, we set off through the lovely little village of Barley, out onto the surrounding countryside, with my wife, sister brother in -law, daughter and her friend, my West highland terrier and sisters brown Labrador
Very quickly we found that the pubic rights of way had been make to be slightly less accessible to the general public, than would be considered optimal by various local sheep farmers...
(
slight exaggeration on making our way through the fields towards Pendle hill
So after wandering through the fields knee deep in sheep shit, we came to our first stile which are built into the dry stone walls, these may be made for sprightly border collies, but not over weight shit stained 7 stone labradors. So we man handled the dog over getting further covered in shite.
Fat shite.......
Onwards we headed over several of these to get to the base of Pendle Hill and the wide open spaces, only for the brother in law to start getting slightly twitchy saying, "we are walking round that aren't we?" etc etc.
Anyway, upon telling him the intention was to walk up it and follow the ridge back down, he decided to inform us he didn't like open spaces, especially high ones !!!!
So, he turned back and the kids saw this as a way out and off they sloped back to the local pub in Barley.
So, my wife and I, our dog, and my sister and her overweight Labrador kept on moving over several narrower and more difficult to negotiate stone stiles, all the whilst while it was getting darker.
So after, much deliberation.......we decided to sod the hill and head back to the Pendle Inn. After trapsing along several single track roads which only seemed to be occupied by dope smoking teenagers in cars, we arrived back to the Pendle Inn, to find the brother in law 4 pints of Peroni down and the kids getting stuck into a nice fish supper by the roaring fire.....
A vision of hope, ray of light call it what you will....
Bloody witches !!!!
