There was frost on the Skoda's windscreen at ten past nine on Wednesday and a sky so blue I checked the forecast twice. This is Leeds in February, so I assumed it was a trick. It wasn't. It was the clearest day of half-term, Rob had his rota day off, and we put the flask, the sandwiches and two children into the car and drove up to Ilkley Moor.
The rocks
We were parked by half past ten, £4 for the car park below the Cow and Calf rocks, which I paid with a handful of small change that Isla counted out for me. It's about ten minutes up the path to the rocks. The Cow is the big crag and the Calf is the boulder that sits apart from it, which Alfie, who is six, had been told about by Rob for a week and was therefore prepared to be unimpressed by. He wasn't. He went up the back of the Calf faster than I could follow, with me behind him holding a hand that wasn't allowed to touch him. Isla, nine, came up with her hood zipped to the nose and a dignified expression, and stood at the top saying "Wow" quietly, as if it might get out.
The wind up there was cold enough to make your teeth ache. Below us the whole of Wharfedale was laid out in sunlight, and you could see the stone walls like a drawing someone had done in pencil. Rob sang On Ilkley Moor baht 'at. Isla pretended not to know us. Alfie sang it back, the wrong way round, and asked what a "baht" was. Rob said it was a kind of hat, and I let him have that one.
The crisps
We found a flat rock out of the wind and unpacked the sandwiches. Alfie had a bag of ready salted crisps, which he'd been saving all morning in his coat pocket. I want to be clear about the sequence. He opened the bag, held it up to show Isla, and at that moment a collie came round the rock at speed, took the whole packet out of his hand in one go and trotted off with it.
The owner, a man in a bobble hat, was very sorry. He came across with the packet, now somewhat chewed, and offered Alfie a flapjack out of his rucksack. Alfie, after a pause, accepted. He wrote the dog off as "not a bad dog, just hungry," and gave it a look. He said later that the flapjack was better than the crisps, which is a hard thing to hear from a boy whose mother makes flapjack every Sunday.
What it cost
- Parking: £4
- Flask of tea, squash, sandwiches, fruit and flapjack from home: already in the weekly shop
- Petrol: about £4
- Four hot chocolates in a café on the way home: £9.20
That's £17.20 for the day, and at the end of it we walked up the high street in Ilkley and looked in Bettys' window, where the fat rascals sat on their trays under the lights and the queue went out of the door. We looked, we talked about it, and we kept walking. The hot chocolates in the café round the corner were £2.30 each, and Isla made hers last forty minutes. Alfie got a moustache of cream and wore it all the way to the car.
The coats were the other thing I noticed. Isla's was the one from the Next sale rail (£22) and Alfie's was the Vinted one (£12), with the £2.50 hat. They did what coats are meant to do. It was nice, for once, to see the winter kit earning its keep on a hill.
The rest of half-term was ordinary. Linda and Steve had them on the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday while I was at work, and Friday was rain and Lego. But the moor is the day I'll remember. In the car on the way home Alfie fell asleep with the flapjack wrapper in his hand. Just before he went, he said he wanted to go back to the big rocks again, and next time he'd bring his crisps in a rucksack, where dogs can't get at them.
