Out Rambling Again

Yesterday I joined the Thursday Ramblers for a five-mile hike. It was a particularly scenic walk through Chevin Forest Park, situated atop a hill between Harrogate and Leeds. The hike included some very steep hills and I found myself huffing and puffing along. Yesterday was bitterly cold but we all exerted ourselves so much on the hike that we began peeling away some of our layers of clothes. Our efforts were rewarded with panoramic views of the Yorkshire countryside. The skies were quite hazy so our view was a bit diminished and we could not see such distinctive landmarks as the White Horse (a horse etched out in chalk on a mountainside); but the view was quite impressive, nonetheless. We walked through a former rock quarry where we saw some incredible boulders, at another point we walked past some beautiful moss and fern covered rocks, then we came to a curious line of stone slabs. They looked like headstones and were planted shoulder to shoulder along a pathway. We also saw a curious totem-like statue carved out of wood. Many coins had been pounded into the wood; someone on the walk said they had seen something similar on another hike -- must be a ramblers' tradition. The walk took a little over two hours when we made our way to the Royalty Pub for lunch.