More Moors (Osmotherly to Chop Gate)

  

      Coming  home last night through the dark alley, I flipped a light switch and foof! Blew the circuit, plunging the whole B&B into darkness.  But Jim and the man from the pub soon put things right. Second foible was this morning: the dog was scratching at the dining room door.  "Oh, let him in," we said. "We like dogs."  Are you sure?  "Oh, yes, yes." So the landlady opened the door and the dog and her two giant pups rushed in. One dropped his ball right in my plate.  "Oh, he likes you!" she gushed. I should have just set the plate on the floor and let him finish it off the bacon, lick up the runny eggs. 

       The B&B is closing next week for the season and perhaps forever as the landlady can't buy her wicked ex out.  Pity, because its a lovely house in a picturesque village.  After breakfast, she sent us off, saying to give her love to tonight's landlady, an old friend. 

     And we walked off down the road and up into the moorland.  And up and down and way up and more down. It was misty.  We could see enough to know that the views must be absolutely magnificent; the book even promised us a first glimpse of the North Sea from the heights. But today it was more of a Chinese painting, just wispy hints. 

Bench to sit on and admire the view.
Maybe some other day.

    There seems to be a large community of pheasants, or maybe it's grouse, who nest in the heather. When startled, they take off with a great flapping of wings, flying barely three feet above the heather and talking to each other in scratchy voices.  When we finally made it down to the road, the B&B guy kindly picked us up where the trail crosses the road and drove us to the farm down a road littered with smashed pheasant carcasses.  Or maybe it's  grouse? 
     Tomorrow promises to be more of the same inexorable climbing,  ridge after ridge. Only it's supposed to rain.