Viva Black-Vegas!!

Sunday, 30th October
13.7 Km (8.5 miles) - 2h:33min

Unbelievably on the penultimate day in October we completed this walk in t-shirts - the temeprature was around 14 degrees !!  The reason for visiting Blackpool was my father's annual holiday there. The excuse was there to walk from Blackpool up the coast to Fleetwood.
I have to say, and I don't want to sound snobbish, that Blackpool is still as gaudy as I remember it in my youth.  However, the Parkinson's Disease Society have held a week's event there and my parents have attended for a number of years.
The walk is very easy - ensure that the sea is on your left hand side and don't wander too far to the right ! It is also not a walk if you want solitude - the crowds were certainly out, and why not it was an absolutely glorious day.
If both Gill and I have any complaint it was that the whole walk was on concrete and both of us complained about sore feet and Gill ended up with some nasty blisters. 
Oh ! getting back ?  Thanks to the No. 14 bus which dropped us in the middle of town and left us with a half mile at the end getting back to our start point - a bit of a hobble if the truth be told.  Still, a very enjoyable walk.

Ingleton Waterfalls & Kingsdale

Sunday, 16th October

13 km (8 Miles) - 3 hr 18 min
OL2 - Yorkshire Dales (Southern and Western Areas)

Well, it's been almost three weeks since our last walk - in the meantime we have been busy moving my daughter into her new house in Lincoln (good luck to both Hannah and Alex in their new jobs and their new life in England) and also moving my father into a sheltered flat.
The latter has been quite emotional in respect that my sister and I have had to clear out the old house and, in the process, have unearthed memories of our childhood and family history that we had almost forgotten about.
In that respect this walk was also nostalgic given that (as far as I can remember) the last time I visited Ingleton's waterfalls was in my childhood - we lived some 20 miles away in the village of Langcliffe).
The walk itself really needs no detail as, once you reach the waterfalls (and pay your £5.00 entry fee), there is nowhere else to go but to follow the path that winds through woodland at first and then past Pecca Falls climbing steadily to Thornton Force.

Here's Gill stood next to the Force which, following almost a week of prolonged rain, was in good spirits !!

The going is good throughout and your £5.00 has obviously been well spent in creating and maintaining the footpaths.  A word of warning is that the outward stretch is reasonably strenuous with plenty of uphill sections - you are, after all, going against the river on this stretch and water, as we all know, flows downhill !

Just above Thornton Force the walk, which we got from the walkingworld website, deviates from the waterfall route and instead heads off up Kingdale.  A gloriously wide and flat bottomed dale with a single track road and quiet after the relatively crowded surrounds of the waterfalls.  The walk up the dale is via. the road as far as a ladder stile (GR SD702780) where we stopped for lunch next to the dried out Kingsdale Beck. Inagine our surprise then when the Beck suddenly sprang into life with the water filling as if the tide were coming in !
The route back is across meadow before a relatively easy climb over the shoulder of Wakenburgh Hill to re-join the waterfall route. 
Again, the route back is simply a case of following the signs for the waterfall walk as the return stretch down the River Doe again provides spectacular falls and gorges where the water gushed through.
By the time we got back to Ingleton the rain was fairly beating down but, I'm happy to say, my investment in a new pair of walking boots paid off as I was able to change without having wet feet !!  Congratulations to Scarpa - top class boots that didn't make my feet ache too much although it was the first time I had worn them.
Usual set of photographs is available from the link