...nothing but footprints

We certainly had a very peaceful night's stay at The Black Horse Hotel in Grassington.  Even though our visit coincided with the Grassington Festival, the streets were silent and apart from us there was only one other guest staying at the hotel.  For some reason, he had been given the very next room to ours, which kind of reminded me of those times when I've parked in an empty car park to find the only other car has been parked right next to mine.  Thankfully though our neighbour was very quiet.  It would have been a tad ironic if he'd turned out to be a loud snorer, or a hard of hearing person who enjoyed watching TV into the small hours.  In spite of all this blissful silence, I still managed to wake up much earlier than necessary and, once again, spent the time before breakfast familiarising myself with the route for the day ahead.  Not that I really needed to do this.  We'd walked some sections of this walk a few times before and I was already familiar with many of

A gentle rain was falling when I awoke to our second day on the Dales Way.   We had left our room curtains open and I could see that the rain would soon pass.  It was a little after 5 a.m.  Breakfast was almost three hours away, but after an excellent night's sleep I felt refreshed and wide awake.   Having made a coffee, I propped myself up in bed and settled back to read my Dales Way guidebook.  The previous day we had walked for just over three miles but today the "proper" walking would begin.  I wanted to commit as much of the route as possible to memory and to make a mental note of any interesting features along the way.  As I soon discovered, there would be plenty of those. Breakfast was consistent with the high quality of every aspect of our stay at the Crown.   I'd decided to avoid filling up each morning with a "full English" and I especially enjoyed the alternative of a soft boiled egg and "soldiers".  Over a leisurely breakfast we chatte