It rained for most of the seventy-odd hours we were in Wensleydale, and Alfie counted. 'That's six hours of not-rain,' he announced on Wednesday teatime, 'and four of them were when we were asleep.' He was close. We had a stone cottage a mile outside Hawes from Easter Monday to Thursday, three nights for £345, and I'd still call it one of the best breaks we've had.
Why a cottage and not a hotel
I looked at a hotel first, out of habit. The cheapest family room I could find in Hawes for those nights was £148 a night, room only, which is £444 for the three nights before anybody has eaten a thing. The cottage was £345 all in, which works out at £115 a night. It had a proper kitchen, a wood-burner with logs in the basket, and a back door onto a field of lambs. The kitchen was the clincher. It meant I could do what I do at home, just somewhere with a better view.
On Saturday I did my normal Aldi shop and packed what we'd have eaten at home anyway into two cool boxes: milk, bread, bacon, eggs, sausages, a tub of ragu from the freezer, pasta, cereal, apples and the good teabags. That was £52 of food we'd have bought regardless, so I haven't counted it as part of the cost of the break.
The other thing I packed was the box from the cupboard under the stairs, which holds the things we only need when it's wet:
- Waterproof trousers for everyone (Alfie in Isla's old pair, rolled four times at the ankle)
- Two spare pairs of socks each per day, which turned out to be right
- A tea towel just for boots
- Uno, a pack of cards and the travel Connect 4 with a missing red counter
The wet bits
On Tuesday morning we walked to a waterfall, about a mile from the road, in full waterproofs, with the beck beside the path louder than any stream I've heard. The falls themselves were brown and enormous and wreathed in spray. Alfie stood at the bottom with his mouth open, then asked whether we could go back for a biscuit. Isla's left boot let in water at the stile and she carried the squelch for the whole mile with great dignity. There were lambs everywhere, and somewhere above us a curlew kept making that rising, bubbling call, which Rob said was a kettle coming to the boil. Isla said it was obviously a bird.
Rob took forty-one minutes to get the wood-burner going on the first night. Isla timed him. 'Forty-one minutes, Dad.' By Wednesday it took him eleven, and he walked about like a man who has done something clever.
Hawes, and the £40
We spent £40 in Hawes in total. Tuesday lunch in a café was £22.40 for two soups, two toasties and two juices, with the wet coats steaming on the backs of the chairs. A piece of Wensleydale with cranberries was £4.60. Alfie bought a fossil from a shop for £3.50 and carried it back in both hands like a baby bird. The last £9.50 was hot chocolates on Wednesday afternoon, after a second walk that went the way of the first.
Fuel there and back, plus the drives out to the waterfall and a look at a viaduct, was £38. Jean next door fed Mabel and took in a parcel, and was given a slice of flapjack for her trouble when we got back.
What I remember most is the evenings. No screens in the cottage after tea, partly because the signal was a rumour, and so we played Uno. Thirty-one games over three nights. Isla kept the tally on the back of the cottage information folder: Isla won twelve, Rob eleven, me six, and Alfie two, which he counts as a tie. On the last night he got a Draw Four from his sister and had to go and stand in the kitchen for a minute with his hands over his face, then came back and lost with grace.
We didn't see the sun until the drive home on Thursday, somewhere past Skipton, when it came out all at once and lit the whole of the back seat. Nobody said anything for a bit.
The sums: £345 for the cottage, £40 in Hawes and £38 on fuel makes £423 for three nights, against £444 for the hotel room alone.
