Had a gentle rambling weekend based in Ingleton with my old schoolfriend Jo.
Jo kept telling me she was not fit, and so I did not force her to do the Three Peaks nor indeed to rent a PVC suit and go caving!
We did the Ingleton Falls walk, which is definitely recommended if you can get optimum conditions as we did – nice warm weather following lots of rain. The rivers were belting along and the falls were thundering away impressively. It was a bit of shock to have to pay 4.50 each to have to follow a footpath but it was worth it in the end.
Next day, me being too mean to pay to go into a tourist show cave, we went up into the hills to find Yardas cave – a big cavern easliy accessed from the road and requiring by way of equipment only wellies and a torch. Here is Yordas:
Ian had lent me his superduper head torch but omitted to tell me it needed new batteries. So, after stumbling around on a slippery slope hand-in-hand in the dark, and finding the river by walking into it, we decided discretion was the better part of valour. Having peered around the cavern with the aid of a mobile phone torch function and a camera flash, we beat a retreat and went off for another ramble instead.
Down to Clapham, another delightful village, whence we followed the Nature Trail (only 60p this time) to Ingleborough Cave and continued on to Trow Gill. Here I was able to explain to Jo what the shiny bolts on the gorge walls were for and imply that I would be able to do the routes if only I had brought my climbing shoes….
Back to Clapham where we wound up our chillout weekend with a(nother) tea shop:
The old headtorch with no batteries gag works a treat everytime!! 😆 😆
I did some of these walks (but not the caves) when on hols in Austwick the year before last. A nice part of the world. One of our days out was somewhat spoiled by my battery literally blowing up when I started the car on our return. Fortunately we weren’t too far from base & the kind recovery man gave us a lift back after dropping the car off at a garage.