Bedale, north Yorkshire

We travelled north on Monday, as we thought we might try and lose ourselves in the Yorkshire countryside. Before doing so we had arranged to meet briefly with Nicola and Claire, Karen's sister and our niece who had completed a big shop for us in Redcar. Massive thanks to Nicola and Claire for their assistance. After a distance handover, at a car park in Redcar by the beach, we stopped by Karen's parents house to have a quick conversation through the porch glazing. We were heartened to see they were both in good spirits and keeping themselves safely out of harms way.
On the way up to Redcar the rumour of a complete lockdown was circulating, so we decided to ditch our plan to stay on the stray in favour of a Certificated Site we had arranged to stay on at Little Crakehall near Bedale in the Vale of York to complete our self isolation. We moved quickly onto Bedale arriving in early evening.
As it turns out this site may be our home for some time and we could not have picked a better one. Stella our host is very helpful and friendly, and we are surrounded by fields. We have power, water, waste facilities and, due to the situation, when we finish our isolation next week we will have exclusive use of the facilities block which is pristine. Stella has closed the site to all others during this period .
The site is based on a farm, we overlook a large field holding a large flock of sheep, Swaledales (possibly we are no experts) and Herdwick (deffo we have been told) which Stella tells us are due for lambing very soon.
We have access to a few local footpaths for country walking and will explore more after our two weeks are up. We have, however, completed the same walk on each of the last three days and come across only a few other walkers - all cheery and mindful of keeping a safe distance when we pass by. It has been nice to see young families out with mum and dad together.
The farm has free range chickens and sells eggs in a hut along their entrance lane, which we will be trying. The farm also has a number of pigs which all look exceedingly happy with their current lot. One of my photos shows just how happy a pig can be.
When we are not exercising on our walks Karen has her sewing to keep herself occupied and I am currently making an effort to get to grips with the drone. We have the telegraph crossword to download daily - we are still 2 months behind but catching up - and we will start a weekly scrabble tournament to keep ourselves occupied. Karen is quietly confident i'm sure - in Australia after going 8-nil down she ended up thrashing me by a clear six games. There is a library swap for books on site so we will be able to wade through a load of literature we otherwise might not have contemplated reading.Read more