Skating and sledging

Saturday we had a quiet day, Tom was displaying signs of being tired, and I was pretty tired too and needed a day of doing not much.  Matt headed to Leeds for the day as he had a translators' Christmas lunch / social to go to.

Look at that blue sky!

It was a nasty nasty day and as a result football training was cancelled which I think was a good thing.  We had a quiet morning in, then mushrooms on toast for lunch, followed by a snuggle on the sofa watching Polar Express - Tom's favourite Christmas film.  We then headed to the village for late night shopping / skating rink / Santa.  This is an event the village has held in various forms since we moved here - one year it was amazing with fake snow machine and lots of stalls selling food etc.  Since then it has sort of died.  This year they hired a skating rink - it was only small, but it got people into the village, and for children that have never been skating before (Tom being one of them) it was great fun.  It only cost £2 for 30 skating, which was very good value.  Tom began to get the hang of it and managed to slide a little bit.

Snowball fight

There was a poorly attended lantern parade and then Santa arrived on his sleigh.  The newly formed village band was in the square playing festive tunes.  There was then supposed to be a ceilidh, but nothing happened.  We hung around for ages, but nothing took place.  Oh hum, Tom did go to see Santa though (we have given up trying to call him Father Christmas as everything now seems to be branded Santa!) the present he was giving out was desirable (squidgy frogspawn stress reliever which lights up).  As the ceilidh didn't take place we headed home for tea.

Herbert was happy!

We were then supposed to pick Matt up from Clapham, but his train got cancelled in Skipton.  He then got another to Ribblehead.  Tom and I headed out to Ribblehead to collect him, however, there had been a big hail shower meaning the roads were loaded with balls of ice.  Hum, I drove up to the end of the one way system.  The car was slipping and sliding all over the place - there was no way I would be able to get it up to Ribblehead, so we headed home.  A couple of phone calls to Katie up in Ribblehead and she arranged for Jon (who was at work at the Hill Inn) to drive back to hers, get the Land Rover, pick Matt up from the pub and drive him down.  Turns out that i did the right thing as one car smashed into a wall just outside the Hill Inn.  There was lots of black ice on the road, Jon struggled in the Land Rover - the Civic wouldn't have made it.  Anyway, it all got sorted and Matt got home!

Happy boy

Sunday we woke up and there was white stuff everywhere.  Not only had it snowed but it was deep.

Dry stone wall and Whernside

Sledge!

Only one thing for it - sledging at the Hill Inn.  Normally the slopes of the Hill Inn are crowded with folk from Ingleton when it snows, so we were expecting to join the crowd.  No, we were the first to get there, so we made our tracks.  Still no-one came.  Very strange.  We carried on but to be honest in the end we got a bit bored, much more fun to sledge with others than by yourselves.  We gave up and decided to head to the pub.  The Hill Inn was closed, so we headed to the Station Inn (the road had been gritted by this point).  There we had a drink and a mince pie each (sledging is hard work - struggling up the hill at the end of every run).  We then decided, that as it was such a lovely day, to do the Ribblehead circular walk - which we did.  We then had a lunchtime dinner at the Station Inn which was remarkably good (this pub used to be awful, but the owners booted the last lot of tenants out and now it is much much better).  We then headed back down into Ingleton - still not many people on the slopes of the Hill Inn - not sure where everyone got to - maybe Christmas shopping again?

Can't remember what we did for the rest of the day - hot baths and a bit of relaxing I'm assuming.