Train Spotting

Flying Scotsman at Settle

Friday - today the Settle to Carlisle line re-opened.  In celebration, the Flying Scotsman did a return trip and the return leg through Settle was in time for Tom once out of school, so we headed there and joined the other train nuts on the platform to watch it go through. It wasn't exactly hurtling along, but it was a fine sight.

On Saturday, Tom had no football for once - woo hoo!  We decided to take advantage of the train line reopening and headed to Carlisle.  Once there, Tom and Matt watched trains whilst I went shopping.  We then met up at a rather nice restaurant, The Last Zebra for lunch.  Two huge kebabs for me with sweet potato chips, and lobster macaroni cheese, scampi, belly pork lollipops, garlic bread and sweet potato chips for the boys, plus a pint of Brewdog Zeitgeist (£5.50!) for Matt.

Tom with Mary Queen Of Scots

With full and happy bellies we went to do a little more shopping (Tom spent the rest of his book vouchers on some Zoe's Rescue Zoo books - he has the full set now) before returning home.

Sunday dawned a pleasant day so we headed out for the day.  We ended up climbing Farleton Knott, or as we call it Mt Fuji.  It looks a steep climb from the base, but it wasn't that bad and we got a good view from the top.  We ended up doing a circular walk, down a gully and along to a canal back to the car - almost 4 miles in the end.

Atop Farleton Knott

We then went to the nearby fishery tea rooms where we had a very cheap and very nice lunch (Matt made them add up the bill twice as he couldn't believe it was so cheap - great range of cakes too!)  We then headed home, after which Tom did a few dozen laps of the pump track on his bike before coming home for tea.