Day 74 An easy day with waterfalls

Today we had a short nine mile day walking along the valley past two spectacular waterfalls.

We had arranged to meet Karen at the Pennine Way sign at ten o’clock. It was raining but not too heavily. The path was easy and delightful, with woodland and meadows beside the River Tees

We ambled along, enjoying the scenery and the sound of the river which we couldn’t quite see. We did see old lead mine workings-Middleton had a thriving lead industry for two hundred years

And then we reached Low Force. The waterfalls we have seen so far have been lovely but just haven’t had the same volume of water as Low (and later High) Force

We stopped and watched for quite some time before making our way to the rock where the people were jumping. It looked a long way down.

We carried on to High Force pausing to take a photograph of Graham and Karen with some sheep sculptures.we saw a lot of ducks, mostly sitting quietly in the wet grass, then scurrying to the water as we passed. We saw dippers as well. I have been hoping to see a dipper, so to see several of them was a treat. We met Chris (he who is ferrying the three lads and their luggage) again, on his way back from High Force.

High Force was spectacular. Again we admired it before sitting down to lunch. After lunch we passed through the largest juniper forest in Europe, and found some wild pansies.

We now had to put on a bit of speed in order to reach the hotel where we had arranged for a taxi to meet us to take us back to Middleton. The path was fairly easy, passing a quarry and then a bridge to a farm where, once again, we met Chris, as the farm was a campsite. At this point we took to the road arriving at the hotel in time to have a cup of tea before our taxi arrived to whisk us back to Middleton.