Let’s go cycling

May 22-26
Todmorden to Otley. 48km, 780m elevation, around 18 degrees and mostly sunny ☀

A lovely ride through some very interesting places…
The delightful Canal path to Hebden Bridge before first stop for a coffee- very cycle orientated and a cool little market to wander around. I vaguely recall some murder mystery based here too…seems like just the sort of place for it!

We’re now in the Pennines and a few hills have crept in to the mix. Nothing too awful yet…just enough to remind us that the UK isn’t all flat!
Next stop… a jaunt through the streets of Haworth to check out the home and hangouts of the Bronte Sisters. A gorgeous little village, with oh so many tourists!!!

And a few km later it was a “corned beef mush” pasty from a little bakery near Shipley. Interesting…not quite what I expected from a pasty!! Did the job however…

Then to Otley to catch up with all the rellies for a few days!
A lovely weekend of reconnecting, eating, and lots of walking (well, lots by my standards… I suspect fairly minimal by Fuller standards 🤣)

May 26- 28
Otley to Kettlewell, 45ish km, 682m elevation, cool cloudy and threatening!
Monday morning it was goodbye to the Otley Fullers and Isabel, who’s on her way back to Oz now. And back on the bikes for a camping trip with the rest of the Fullers at Kettlewell. A nice little ride without the panniers- thanks to the Fuller folks for carting all our gear to the campsite for us!

Yorkshire Dale villages are all really charming, nestled in valleys, small cluster of houses, two or three pubs and a couple of tea shops.

So there’s something about the Fullers. They are all supremely fit, and they all seem to love camping. It’s a Fuller thing. Definitely not a Trueman thing… I was pretty worn out after trying to keep up with a nine year old over a 12km hike. But a great walk, terrific views from the top of Great Wernside…then a bitterly cold and wet descent!
Our first couple of weeks in the UK gave us absolutely superb weather, made camping seem not too bad a thing to do…so why not head to the Yorkshire Dales for a lovely couple of days of camping and walking. And eating. Ummm. And rain. Then more rain. It seemed to rain pretty constantly over the two days we were there, a little bit of a dampener (ha ha) but it was great to spend time with everyone in the communal (leaky!) tent.

Coincidentally our stay at Kettlewell coincided with the annual “Duck Race”- kinda like a raffle but we got to barrack for a numbered plastic duck. Something like 10000 ducks started the race upstream, and we waited with a great air of expectation, along with plenty of other equally excited folks. Tabitha and Isaac, Neil’s niece/nephew had a great time waiting for the ducks to arrive…but none of us could quite manage to wait it out to the finish line, they were just too slow! Pretty sure a whole heap of ducks didn’t make it. The river level was quite low due to the dry conditions…although we did stand watching in the rain for the best part of an hour.

Now it’s goodbye to all the Fullers for a while and we wend our way north- destination Scotland 🙂

687 km, 6470m elevation