Week #101 Youtube milestones and Yorkshire Dales hikes: A Week in the Life

After returning home earlier than planned from the Lake District due to the torrential rain forecast, we have had a pretty quiet week catching up on a few jobs around the house and some long overdue admin tasks. We didn’t even leave the house on Tuesday as the weather was so dire!

Yorkshire Dales hike in glorious sunshine

However, in sharp contrast, we woke up on Wednesday morning to the most glorious sunrise and blue-sky day. When living in the Dales there is only one thing to do on a day like that: we packed our walking boots and set off to climb a mountain!

Pen Y Ghent is our favourite peak and we wanted to go into the Dales to do some filming any way. Getting out mid-week is lovely as the hills are so quiet and we had the mountain pretty much to ourselves. The view from the summit was probably the clearest I have ever seen it and it was enhanced even further by a lone parascender silently gliding above the fells. On our descent we had a lovely experience when we encountered a couple who recognised us from our YouTube channel – we are always surprised at how many people there are out there who can relate to our experiences and are on a similar path in their lives.

Getting to know our neighbours

We spent Wednesday afternoon having afternoon tea and scones with our neighbours which was so lovely. Over the past year we have grown really fond of them and love chatting away about what the village was like and how it has changed over the years. They are now in their 80’s but loved travel when they were younger, particularly to the USA, and we have spent a couple of wonderful afternoon sharing photo’s and travel stories.

A snowy trip to Bingley

Thursday was a little fraught as the weather changed again – with snow forecast all day. The forecast for our part of the Dales was not too bad and in reality, although it snowed continuously, it never really settled. However, Richard had to get to Bingley to meet up with an engineer from the subsidence team to take some measurements from his mum’s house. Bingley had a lot more snow than us! He did manage to get there ok and luckily the roads were kept clear enough for him to get back. I think he was very pleased that he had the new all-weather tyres on the van; he had even packed the snow chains just in case!!

Family Time

We have had a fabulous weekend in Cheshire as I hadn’t seen my mum since Christmas. It is so nice that Luke lives just down the road from her, he popped in a for a coffee after work and ended staying most of the evening for a meal. We even managed to invite ourselves around to his new house for Sunday lunch with mum, Georgia and Mollie – he is an amazing chef and did us the most delicious roast pork dinner. So a fab impromptu family weekend was had by all. Georgia had a great time with the second love of her life – Albie the fat cat!

Richard went for a 20km hike in the Peak District with Luke and Charlotte on Saturday, they are trying to get hiking fit as they want to do the Yorkshire 3 peaks later in the summer. I gave it a miss as I have done something to my lower back and could hardly move, but plan to be soon back at it.

A couple of milestones

This week we have hit a couple of massive milestones.

Richard has completed a 365 day streak on Duo Lingo; he is learning French.

We were humbled to have reached 5,000 subscribers on our YouTube channel - something that we had never anticipated when we started out on the journey 18 months ago. So a big thank you to those of you that have been watching our channel and helping it to grow.

Next week is looking a little more hectic with a visit to the motorhome show at the NEC. We are starting to think about what type of van we will replace Nelson with in a couple of years time and Richard the planner is already thinking ahead as lead times for new vans are quite long at the moment. I’m quite excited, even though it is something that feels so far away still, it will soon come around.

 Have a great week

Jackie and Richard x