Well today certainly didn't turn out as expected!
The plan was for us to leave late morning, do a short walk and have lunch at the Falling Foss tea garden. Now we had planned dining at the same place a few years ago when on a walk in the area, but that went wrong due to 'cow gate' when we were charged by a large group of young cattle. So hopefully today we would have more luck.
Our drive over to Littlebeck was a short one, around 15 minutes at the most. We parked in the village hall car-park then headed the short distance down the hill to the start the walk that would take us down the valley towards Falling Foss - a wooden sign clearly marked the direction and 1 mile distance. It's a walk that takes you through trees and follows the beck, however, I seemed to recall it as a stroll besides the stream but it was not. Whilst not exactly Everest the path does keep going up and down the sides of the valley so it a little more challenging that a ramble. What made it worse was that it was very breezy and cool back at the cottage so we dressed appropriately, but down in the valley there was no breeze so we were a lot warmer than expected.
After about 30 minutes we reached The Hermitage, and here it went all wrong. There is a fork in the path, the left hand one goes uphill and right hand one goes down. Now as the cafe is in the bottom of the valley common sense suggests that you take the path downhill and the OS map suggests that it takes you in the general direction. But alas, as we discovered after about a mile and a half of wasted walking, was not the right choice.
After trying different paths we just decided to give up so took the long steep path back up to The Hermitage and then headed back towards Littlebeck, having had no lunch and nothing to drink.
By the time we arrived back at the car the expected walk of just over 2 miles ended up being 3.9 miles, so you can tell how much extra walking we ended up doing. Until the next time....
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