Back near the beginning of the month I took a couple days off from walking to rest and rejuvenate. I stayed with friends of Ann’s in the village Kirkby Malham. It sits in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.

(If you’ve seen any of the episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS – which you should! – this is exactly what it looks like. And I do mean exactly, because this area is where the exterior shots were filmed.)

Anyway, during one day while I was on holiday from my walking pilgrimage holiday, I walked a very short bit of England’s first national trails, the 268 mile Pennine Way. Much of it runs on the ridge tops of the Pennine Mountains, up on the moors. The bit I tramped was down in the valley of the River Aire, right along the river, from the village Airton back to Kirkby Malham. (We had coincidentally been at the headwaters of River Aire the day before.)

I hadn’t gotten too far along when I came upon a roadblock in the middle of the footpath. After a few minutes I gave up, backtracked, crossed the River on a bridge in Airton, and walked past the roadblock using a public footpath on the other side of the river. Then I crossed the River again on a footbridge and continued on my way.

Here’s the roadblock: