Ickornshaw to Malham: LEJoG Day 34

A hot and humid day mainly over farmland and rolling hills. 

Morning view.

After an early trig topped moorland summit (Pinhaw Beacon) most of today was through farmland. Fields of hay, freshly cut and drying or else harvested, the path a bright green ribbon against the yellow of the cut grass. Cows and their calves watched me pass. A bull, big, muscular with a ring through its nose and enormous testicles, eyed me from beside a cow as I calmly walked by, taking care not to stare at him. A hiker behind me said he only proceeded after seeing the bull did not charge me! Lambs vigorously pushed their heads into their mother's flanks in their eagerness to get their milk, or else looked at me wondering what to do before running back to their mother. As an interlude, there was a short section of canal lined with hawthorn, its blossoms like fireworks, frozen mid explosion, their white petal sparks spewing out. 

In this field of cut hay, the path shows up as a ribbon of bright green.

Gargrave marked a change from the gritty blackened villages that I had been walking through, built around mills now long gone, to the more conventionally pretty villages of the Yorkshire Dale's. I had previously enjoyed a visit to the Dalesman Tea Room, and had been looking forward to a repeat. Sadly it was closed on Mondays and today was that day. Still, I cannot complain, people need a day off, and earlier I had the good fortune to pass a table with slices of lemon cake for 50p among other things. Having just such a coin in my pocket I put it in the honesty box and enjoyed a morning break with cake. In addition the Coop at Gargrave had a Costa coffee machine and ploughman's lunch sandwiches.

The last section before Malham was beside a small river, racing over rocks, or lying dark and still in deeper parts under the trees. I paused to examine the remains of a pump (a multi stage centrifugal pump I thought). 

For a change I had booked the Youth Hostel, where I could charge my various electrical appliances and discretely wash some clothes (my trousers were particularly sticky with dried sweat). Arriving at 4:00 pm, I found the doors did not open until 5:00 pm, so I was obliged to wait in a tea shop....over a cream tea.