On Ilkley Moor all by myself

I'm on my third day of solitude today (Not complete solitude, I was with friends last night, more on that later). Today I woke up feeling crappy after a night full of awful, beer induced dreams. I really don't like drinking very much, and I don't mean to say that I drink very much, I only had about 4 drinks or so yesterday, over the course of about 7 hours, which really is not a lot for me.

So anyways, I had my morning latte, which seldom fails to lift my spirits, then after pissing around for a few hours I finally got my act together and walked down to the train station, where I had a sandwich for lunch and then caught the 3:15pm train to Ilkley. Two pounds return trip, great deal.

I got to Ilkley and really huffed it up the hill until I reached the trail up onto the moor. It was pretty damn enjoyable. A cold day, gray and muddy. I kept hiking up to the ridge only to find another ridge still higher (not so much higher, but farther). I got sick of trying to get to the top, and I was getting the impression that there wasn't really a top anyways, so I made my own trail straight down the hill, past some wooly sheep and into the Cow and Calf Pub. They were out of Turkey and out of Roast Beef so I sat down, looked at the menu, and decided to take my custom elsewhere.

I went down to Betty's tea room and ordered what I always order: Yorkshire cream tea, which consists of a pot of tea for one (damn fine tea), and two sultana scones (raisin scones for us North Americans) complete with clotted cream (we don't have this in North America, but it's like really thick whipped cream and it is delicious) and strawberry jam. Mmmm! To my irritation they were out of sultana scones. I have been to Betty's four times now, and they have not once had sultana scones as far as I can remember. So, once again, I had the date and apricot wholemeal scones as a substitute, which I did not mind.

What I did mind though, was the oppressive atmosphere of Betty's. The place was full of Conservative voting white haired gits. All of them looked exactly the same, husband and wife, husband reading right-wing newspaper (the Daily Mail in fact. A fascist rag of a newspaper that ran a headline in the 1930s that read "Three Cheers for the Nazis!" and has not changed much in the last 70 years. Seriously.) and both idly chit-chatting about nothing. I felt a hundred pairs of creepy country snob eyes all staring at me, just waiting for me to not have proper manners. To make it worse, Betty's has about 11 members of staff at any given time (and it's quite a small place), all standing around waiting for one of these white haired, grey-poupon eating weirdos to beckon them.

When I've gone before with Beth I didn't notice all this because I was enjoying her company, but by myself it was downright unnerving. The place was thick with superficiality, snootiness, and xenophobia. Seriously creepy.

Anyways, I ate my scones, drank my tea, and made my escape. I'm sorry if that was not exciting.

TTFN!
-drew