HARDRAW FORCE
This area is part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, one of its 5 visitor centres is in Hawes. Is very big and warrants much more exploration than we had time for on this visit.

Onwards and upwards to Hardraw, for the Green Dragon. The cosiest, rural pub you could but imagine. Fire blazing, low ceilings, 4 Foresters having a pint and bitching about absent colleagues and friends. Jill, Dave and a Greyhound called Blue from Hull were our fellow punters. 4 years ago they came here for their honeymoon - they've returned for a 2 week break, because its so lovely. We quizzed them on whether this was because of the beautiful walks and such, they said 'no, they'd not been out a lot yet. They'd bought lots of DVDs down and the flat they were staying in had a DVD player and was really pretty cheap'.

We needed something - energy was low. Driving the dales and being on constant look out for those brown signs and 'character that makes blighty blighty' is oddly draining. There was one thing we needed to perk us up - and the thing was Irish coffee (we were fully fed and had plenty of time to walk off the alcohol folks, so worry not).

We'd been told by Bee to ask for Mark- her mate who owns this perfect, perfect pub and has big concerts, brass band competitions and such out the back, of a summer evening. Mark was out, we were told, and we were also told 'I can't make you an Irish coffee..... 'bummer'..... 'but I can give you a coffee and a whiskey'.....two things we needed then,  we took them! What with them being the exact same things we had envisioned, they totally worked in the desired way. Fortified and back in the game once more we walked though the back of our new favourite pub into the back yard. Jill said, on our exit, 'have you got your torch' - we looked at each other and said 'no, we'll be ok'. We thought she was being a bit hysterical and we set off, chuckling sneakily.

Out of the back of the Green Dragon is Hardraw Force- claimed to be England's highest unbroken, over-ground waterfall . Rather unusually, the only access is through the pub and there is a nominal charge to go and see it- wikipedia says £2 but it was £1 when we went.

We walked round and round looking for the natural amphitheatre -'The Lost Amphitheatre', 'The secret fabled lost amphitheatre', we might have been looking vaguely for ancient Greece. Finally we twigged that the big stone circle thing that we'd passed 3 times was actually the Bandstand and that the natural amphitheatre- its all in the name you see- was quite obviously the big steep slopes surrounding it. The ones we'd been scrambling around while the night set-in.

We risked our lives looking for it. After seeing the ferocious waterfall - the force of which made one assistant deeply uneasy, we climbed up the damp, mossy rocks with the help of some hidden broken hand rails and a couple of massive fallen tree trunks which all but blocked the ridiculously sheer path. The aim, still, to get to the top in said search of ancient Greece.  Dear dear, such whatless tourists, we saw more deer and then mislaid them and as Jill had intimated, it was getting really quite dark by the time we got back to the pub. The Green Dragon is a lovely pub and we'd have liked to stay in the village and drink whiskies for the evening.

 RIBBLEHEAD VIADUCT
But we didn't- we left Hardraw and drove over the moors as it darkened - chasing the fast fading light. We passed Ribblehead viaduct , part of the Settle-Carlisle Railway- but it was too dark to photograph it so we were forced to commit it to memory. We mused on the merits of the digital camera- did the ease of modern photography encourage us to neglect our brains' capacity for recollection of our experiences.. hmmm??  Take a photo of it (with you in it) for extra points- there's no point chancing it to brain power now, is there?
A little information on the viaduct for you: hundreds of victorian 'navvies' lost their lives in its building.
Two thousand railway workers established shanty towns on the moors and named the towns after victories of the Crimean War, after posh districts of London for comedy effect or with Biblical names: Belgravia, Sebastopol, Jerico, Inkerman.  Building the Ribblehead (then Batty Moss) viaduct, with its 24 massive stone arches 104 feet (32 metres) above the moor, caused such loss of life that the railway paid for an expansion of the local graveyard, which was sweet of them.