now that’s a wordy title!
it was a very, very busy day. We hiked all around the Dale Peninsula, which may have only been 5 1/2 miles, but maybe it was more than that – however far it was, it took a very long time, as i’ve said. we’d made the decision to forgo seven more miles of walking to the town of Marloes, our stop for the night, and instead went back to the Allenbrook B&B and collected our car. the owners had thought it would be fine if we left our car in Dale, but she assured me that the guy who owned the B&B in Marloes would also be fine with us leaving our car at his place for the nights of our hike.
when we got back to Allenbrook, these little chickens greeted us in the driveway. so cute!
Here’s the Allenbrook owner, John with one of his cool old cars. he works on them a lot, and he assured me that he’s taken this enormous thing out on the tiny roads wround dale. amazing.
two of these dogs guarded the drive; it looks like a greyhound to me!
we drove the short way to Marloes – it was only about three miles by road! we started out on the tiny road leading from dale, and then turned onto an even tinier road. luckily we didn’t meet any cars and didn’t have to back up.
we were happy to arrive at The Clock House in Marloes, which was charming – pictures to follow another day. we decided to walk down the road to the path, to know how far we’d be going in the morning.
it wasn’t a long walk down the uncrowded little road, and found the path following this field.
such a spectacular day!
we decided to walk down the path to the water, but i looked mighty steep to me. as we made our way down, a group of teenagers came walking up the path – and some of them were wearing flip flops! so here we were in our hiking gear, and i was nervous about walking down – but they’d done it in flip flops. but they probably grew up there and did that all the time. maybe if i lived there, i’d walk it in flip flops, too.
i doubt it.
the rocky path we climbed down.
here’s the part of the path we missed walking, facing south – hopefully it wasn’t something so fantastic that we’ll regret seeing it! probably not. but maybe someday we’ll go back and walk it.
someone cut steps into the stone here.
I climbed down this steep path!
Marloes was such a tiny town – they had one little touristy kind of store with a few odds and ends, but no proper grocery store, no gas station – there were a couple of churches and one pub, that’s it. even though it wasn’t right on the water, it was a very nice little place.
very attractive houses lined the main street.
because it had only one pub, we didn’t have to decide where to have dinner. the clock house owner, also named john like the proprietor of the Allenbrook, didn’t think much of the pub and suggested we drive to the town where we’d end up in two nights, but we had no desire to get back in the car.
i can’t remember what i had for dinner, but it wasn’t so memorable…
but then there was dessert.
i ordered sticky toffee pudding, because i’d never had it, but had heard of it.
it was one of the best desserts i’d ever had, despite being completely chocolate-free.
a layer of moist cake, which i later found out was made of dates, and then this delicious sticky carmel-y topping. you could get it with cream or ice cream or whipped cream. i chose cream.
soooo good…i kept texting a small group of people about our trip as we went, and i said that i’d have a sticky toffee pudding party for anybody on the list…and i haven’t even made it at all yet. i did find a few recipes, and it doesn’t look very difficult, but things have kept getting in the way of actually baking it.
plus of course there’s the fact that each piece must have about one million calories, and i’m not doing any long hikes to burn off all those calories.
i did buy the dates, though – now that i’m not going to be so busy for the next few days because of thanksgiving, maybe i’ll make some.
because if there’s one thing we need during this holiday that’s all about eating a lot is more rich and delicious food.
ok then,
mrs. a little bit in the holiday spirit hughes.
