Tours, TV and Tucker

We have had a great couple of weeks touring the Yorkshire Dales, exploring the most beautiful hidden gems, and developing new tours for our guests to choose from. We thoroughly enjoyed riding through snow over Cam Fell, rain over Reeth and sunshine over Swaledale. We had a wry smile to each other sat in our Freelander ‘office’ with its ever changing view! Not bad as a working environment.

We now have two more great  new tours that cover the western most part of the Yorkshire Dales. One travels through thelittle known, but gorgeous, Barbondale and  beautiful Garsdale, while the other is a cruise through Garsdale and over Buttertubs Pass. These two tours are ten out of ten, blow your mind, total WOW factor tours and could well become my favourites .

On one of our trips out we discovered the intriguing Farfield Mill at Garsdale. This mill was renovated by a group of local people after it became empty and dilapidated . It now has a lovely cafe and amazing gallery of art and crafts. Well worth a visit!

On Friday we met up with Liz and Glenn Payne at Herriots in Hawes. They have a lovely B and B, with a cafe and art gallery next door. We were there to chat through,with them, food for our Gourmet Hamper. Liz, a very talented and experienced chef, is going to provide  us with gorgeous lunches on our longer tours, and especially our, Le Yorkshire Tour, that follows the route of Stage One of Le Tour de France.

We are looking for great food that is very special and enhances the experience of our trike tours. Judging by the ‘tasting’ we enjoyed this week, that is exactly what it will be. Everything we ate was beautifully prepared, tasted delicious and was made from local produce. We think we have found a treasure, and working with this great local business fits in with our ethos of bringing, in our own small way, business into the Yorkshire Dales.

Today the wind blew, the rain and sleet came, and we drove to Holme Moss! It is a little off our tour route but we were there to meet up with a film crew from BBC’s Look North. Jason had great fun driving through crazy weather with Harry Gration  and Amy Garcia up and around the top of Holme Moss. Forget the idea that television is glamorous , it is hard work. All credit to both Look North’s presenters, who endured freezing wet and cold weather with smiles and good humour. Thanks to them and the film crew, we had a ball! Looking forward to seeing the finished result (12/2/2014) Look North.