OF YORKSHIRELAND AND THE HOUSE IN WHICH LEONARD NIMOY DOES NOT LIVE

it’s much better up there you know. it really is.

we had apex tickets for the train. this makes train travel halfway affordable. you have to get the right train, no messing, and if you do your seats are reserved. which is good. the train was bang on time but king’s cross station was vile; we had to spend some time in a pub there and i saw a lot of fat people with ridiclious hair-dos. the pub trainee manager looked like he’d cut his own hair with a pair of nail scissors, and he made me wait for five minutes until eleven o’clock before he would sell me swig.

nearly all the seats on the train appeared to have been urinated on, but you have to sit where you are told so that’s that. we got off at leeds and made the connection for skipton. the bus went at about 200mph all the way to grassington which was where we were staying. and what a place it was.

the cottage was in the middle of grassington, a yorkshire village all made out of stones all piled up one on top of the other. like drystone walls but a bit more orderly like. it’s in wharfdale and the river runs through it. well, nearly. we fed the ducks.

our first cache led us to a pub carpark. we went off and found it (going a bit wrong but got there in the end) and then went back to the pub where we got locked in for sunday afternoon when i told the landlord about geocaching and that his pub was mentioned in the geocaching listing. he was well chuffed.

we went back the next evening and won the pub quiz by half a point thanks to a good music round. we got 20 quids in vouchers and so i bought a small round and gave all the change to the fell rescue service which is the pub’s home charity thing. that went down very well so i thought i’d introduce the saxomastraw to yorkshire. a woman called mo is taking a busload of grannies to see cliff and when i saw her later in the week she told me that they are all making saxomastraws to play on the coach when they go to see him. i feel guilty.

in the pub we were told that ‘doctor spock’ [sic] had a house up the road. when we went to do our second cache we made enquiries and found out that leonard nimoy does not live in that house (or does he?) but that patrick stewart does live a bit further up.

the weather was beautiful. we saw lapwings and a wren’s nest. we saw gambolling lambs and coltsfoot… loads of things.

anyway, i won’t bore you with any more. suffice to say that it was a very special week and that in my opinion, upnorthland is a lot better than downhereland.

and we had log fires.

swig stats: copious
telly stats: how shite is that 24hr quiz rubbish?
misery stats: zero, until i got home and found a water bill for 416.28 quids. i thought the landlord was supposed to pay that.
cache stats: found 19, placed 3
face stats: smiley

gentle reader, i’m glad to be home - even though modern life is rubbish and everything stinks. you see, i unamused you for too long. sleep well.