Barbon Inn
Irv and Gail brought the Burnley and Pendle touring year to a delightful conclusion with their November Sunday Run, leading off their eclectic gaggle of MGs and, er, others. Perhaps, the weather could have been better but then, when ever – here, in November – is it? Actually, the variety of constantly changing sun, every different kind of cloud, rain and, of course a rainbow in a deep valley, added to, rather than detracted from, the drama and beauty of the scenery they showed us that day.
Leaving The Old Stone Trough and through Barnoldswick for Gisburn, we got our first sight of the rising ground and taller hills and then – heading to Settle for our coffee stop at Watershed Mill – entered the Yorkshire Dales National Park, motoring to Stainforth, Horton in Ribblesdale and on to the Ribblehead Viaduct. We were roughly following the course of the Settle to Carlisle line – the last, most difficult and costly in lives, impossibly bleak in winter and nearly abandoned, hand dug English railway – through increasingly high and wild countryside with the highest peak, Whernside, at more than 2400 feet. At Ribblehead we parted company with the railway to drive through Widderdale to Hawes before turning back and descending to Sedbergh, returning to cross the track at Garsdale Head, and past still more and ever different high ground and scenery.
Turning south and alongside the upper reaches of the River Lune, we soon came to Barbon – of hill climb fame – and Barbon Inn, where the lady of the house is an MG owner and, not at all ominously, thirteen of us enjoyed an excellent lunch. Thanks once again to Irv and Gail. Next on the agenda is Christmas Dinner in December.
