Another Sunny Day

Autumn colours

Sunday dawned beautiful - another deep blue cloudless sky.  We decided to head back to Barbondale and do the walk we discovered a couple of weeks ago.  We parked up in the usual place, had a game of football, threw some stones in the river, claimed Tom island for Tom with a flag and then headed off on our walk.

Tom did well and walked quite happily with us, with only one minor hiccough.  It took 1.5 hours to walk the 2.4 miles, so we won't break any records, but it was a lovely walk along the river, mostly downhill, to Barbon village, where there was a pub with a fire burning brightly in the grate making us feel very welcome.

Two-hat Tom

One glance at the menu and we decided to eat a proper dinner.  A sandwich was £8.00 and main course £9.00 - it was a no brainer.  Between the three of us, we shared a trio of sausages & mash, a big plate of Sunday roast (pork with crackling) and the inevitable portion of onion rings. Whilst consuming our dinners we realised that we probably wouldn't be able to coerce Tom back to the car on foot - the walk would be mainly uphill and away from a road, so if he played up there would be no choice other than to pick him up and carry him.  Matt therefore decided to walk back himself and drive the car back to us.  It took him 30 minutes to get there - which says a lot about the difference in speed between Tom and him.
I (Matt) should point out that while I marched at great speed back to the car (going shin-deep into a muddy puddle at one point), Nik & Tom killed time by polishing off a portion of apple crumble and custard.

We then headed to Sedbergh for a little walk round to familiarise ourselves. Good news: the butcher's hasn't closed, so I really need to go along one day to see if the display of meat is as good as we remember from 3 years ago.  I also found a hardware shop which looked like it might sell cake cards - it was closed so we will have to go back soon.

Barbon - typical Dales village

Tom fell asleep on the way home, but woke up as soon as we got back so we had a lazy afternoon before having a snack for dinner and bed.