Last thing said from the owner of Stump Cross Cavern as he locked the gate on us and one other motorhome for the evening, "You should have a really quiet night." Well....He couldn't have been more wrong!
The road, which looked more like a lane, was anything but quiet. It became a racetrack first thing in the morning, like 5 am! All tearing off to work with little thought of the disturbance to our sleep. So our lie in became a thing of the past and because we had had breakfast, washed up, made MB road safe (ie- put everything away and checked that cupboard doors wouldn't fly open as we drove along), we were waiting outside the entrance of the Cavern at 9 am. The owner turned up, asked if we had a peaceful night, you may guess what was said! Anyway, we had the cavern all to ourselves and all because we had again not read what time the first people were allowed in. It was 10 am...not 9 am!! Will we ever learn??? Must read the website properly! Whether it was because he felt guilty about the road noise or whether he just wanted to be rid of two idiots loitering on his door step, we will never know.
The 500,000 year old Cavern was another of those self guide tours. I've said it before and I'll say it again, massive fan of doing things this way. So all alone on the mile long walk through the tunnels and vast caverns, we took our time, inwardly digesting the flow stones, stalagmites and stalactites and took a selfie with one of the columns that had formed when the stalagmite met the stalactite.
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Back into the light and we overheard talk about an eclipse. Ears pricked up and rushed back to MB to fire up the computor and find out all about it. So we read, The Moon will cross paths with the Sun early on June 10 and blot out all but a fiery sliver of the solar disc - a so-called annular eclipse. The Ring of Fire won't be visible here in the UK, as it will pass over Canada and Russia, but the good news is hopeful astronomers will still have a chance to see an equally exciting partial eclipse.
Oh, how exciting, when will it start? Blimey 10 am...it has begun. But no such luck for us today. Wall-to-wall cloud and not a hope in hell of seeing anything. Oh well, maybe the conditions will be right for the next one, due on the 25th October 2022.
With the weekend coming up and knowing that finding a motorhome site would be nigh on impossible form Friday, we struck lucky at a CC site near to Malham Cove, which is another place we wanted to visit. If what we have been told is correct, not sure about getting MB down the very narrow lane to the car park, but if we leave VERY early tomorrow hopefully the traffic will be light. Fingers crossed anyway.
This site has a washing machine...yea....and all amenities. Means we can have a proper shower, and what luxury to allow the water to run and run instead of a quick wet all over, shower off, soap, then turning the shower on again to rinse. Conserving what little water is in MB's tank is the same as we do on FS, although FS has a much bigger water tank!
A strenuous walk up the farmers track at the CC site took us to a lookout point to see Malham Cove. This is a huge curving amphitheatre shaped cliff formation of limestone rock with a vertical face of the cliff of about 260 feet in height. From the car park in Malham village, it's about a 4-mile round walk. Gosh, that will give us a good workout tomorrow.
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| Malham Cove |
Oh, and on route to Coniston Cold, where the CC site was, the Leeds and Liverpool canal came into sight. Stopping for lunch, we took a walk to Anchor Lock. It must be well over 6 years since we took FS along this canal and I had no recollections of this lock at all. Must rectify this some day by cruising this waterway again.
And wildlife
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