Wet socks with a view, snow, and absolutely no mention of David Mitchell whatsoever. I promise. See - sometimes an injunction DOES work!

And a very Happy Easter to all my reader.  Do pop round later, I've got a Cadbury's Creme Egg with your name on and a...oh.  Well, you can lick the foil. And, if you're very good, I might let you sniff the tin where the chocolate used to be.  Now.  Since it is officially Spring, I thought I'd tell you about the lovely walk I went on on Good Friday. It went up Ingleby Incline and around the top, for those of you swots who want to look it up on a map.  Sit up straight, there are illustrations and I might be asking questions later....

We set off far too early for my liking, but then any time between breakfast and bed is too early for physical activity as far as I'm concerned.  Myself, my other half and I were accompanied by a mad dog and a packet of banana sandwiches which, quite frankly, weren't a lot of help when it came to a vertical ascent of a slope that made Ben Nevis look like Ben Kingsley.  Look.

This doesn't give a true picture of the stepth of the slope.  But I'm actually lying on the ground panting, that's how steep it is.

Yes, people, there was SNOW.  And, let me tell you, the 'one step forward - slide back two feet' is not a good look for someone wearing a ridiculous hat.  I looked like a really, really unsuccessful cross-country skier.  But I consoled myself with the fact that the view from the top would be spectacular.  All right, it wasn't so much consolation as a fervently muttered prayer, but the thought was there.  Luckily there was a very nice view...

This was it.  Or, at least, part of it.  Another part shows me kneeling down and kissing the flat bit.

 

 

So, you know, that was all right then.  But, at the top there was more snow.  I mean serious stuff.  Not a couple of inches of potential snowballs and tree decoration, no, this was snow that meant it.  And, let me tell you now, I do not have the legs for snow.  Watching me attempt to walk nonchalantly through a snowfield is like watching Doctor Frankenstein's monster out for a bit of a stroll with his legs on backwards and not enough knees.  There was lurching, people!  I half expected some kind of mob with pitchforks to come after me!

I put my left leg in and then neglected to put my left leg out again.  It was the worst hokey cokey ever seen...

So we hitched up the insane dog, who unfortunately isn't a sledge-dog and therefore either pulled us face-down into the snow or ran backwards, and headed along the top towards the increasingly distant downhill stretch.  Like this -

Steve and Dog entrudgulating their way across the snowfields of Yorkshire. Rescue helicopter not shown...

And then we ate the sandwiches.  They tasted a bit funny and had made the bread go all soggy but, hell, there wasn't a MacDonalds for miles, although I do think that the ice-cream van could have at least attempted the slope, because, you know, a Mr Whippy never offends.  And my boots were making a 'wop wop' noise as I walked and my socks had gone stiff.  And I had a wet bottom where Dog had done this...

Only faster.

And that is the tale of my Good Friday excursion. Luckily for you I shall be spending Easter Day mostly at home, consuming my own bodyweight in chocolate and waddling a short distance to the toilet and back.  I won't show you the pictures of that, if you don't mind.

Now, off you go, and enjoy yourself.  Don't mind me, I'm still wringing snow out of my socks and trying to treat frostbite of the buttock.