Originally billed as a day walk to be led by Becky in the Yorkshire Dales, the plans had to be drastically altered after nobody thought to actually tell Becky - who was unfortunately at work on the day. The walk then became a "surprise" walk. A surprise not just to the people on the walk, but also to it's organisers - as nobody had a clue where to go in the absence of any reliable walk leaders!

Tom suggested a walk over Ilkley Moor, which seemed like a good idea; it's close by, has some good walks, and the lack of available walk leaders shouldn't have been a problem as Driving Paul agreed to go over on Saturday and scout out a good walk. However, due to Paul's lack of navigational skills and the fact that St Patrick's celebrations were still going on until the early hours of that day, it seemed unlikely that this would go to plan. Although Paul did manage to overcome the hangover and make it to Ilkley, his poor sense of direction soon doomed the walk to failure. So, after a plea to Eirik, we had recruited a replacement leader.

Starting (for most) at Saltaire station, Eirik led a good length walk over Ilkley moor, to the Cow and Calf. Some people, it seemed though, had not read all the information about the walk. Whilst leaving Saltaire station, Mark Walters called us to advise that he was on the train to Ilkley and wondered where everybody else was! Walking out of Saltaire, those people who had been on Cathy's Baildon-Moor day walk found themselves in familiar territory for a while (fortunately, without the bee attack!). There were the occasional pauses for photos and discussions of who was scared of which animal, but the walk was still progressing quite quickly.

Heading up towards Ilkley Moor, the weather stayed dry for us and not too windy. There were even some patches of snow around! This, of course, led to some snowball fighting and the timely reunion with Mark who had been walking in the opposite direction from Ilkley to meet us. The snowball fights stopped quickly, as Mark turned out to be a good shot and had secured a large patch of ammo.

As we approached the Twelve Apostles stone circle, the wind chill had started to give people cold hands. Amazingly, Tom wasn't complaining about the cold - despite wearing shorts and (if you believe the accusations) waxing his chicken legs. After laughing at Tom's legs, it was time to laugh at Eirik who seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to grasp the meaning of "On Ilkley Moor bar t'at". Despite Lynne's best hints, Eirik just wasn't getting it. In the end, it took some less than subtle comments to get the point across!

Not far now from the Cow and Calf rocks, Paul was starting to recognise things as we were now on ground covered in his scouting attempt the previous day (although he still didn't actually know where he was!). Approaching the Cow and Calf presented a decision of which route to take - a decision which was solved with an ill-thought out 3 player game of paper-scissors-stone (think about it!). The winning route was the direct route to a very busy Cow and Calf pub, where a drink was enjoyed with Kerstin and Astrid who had driven over from Leeds to join us. Eirik actually did go bar t'at briefly at this point, when somebody stole his infamous tasselled hat outside the Cow and Calf pub. The severity of this incident quickly became apparent - so Paul had to give it back.

Due to the Cow and Calf being so crowded, the group made its way into Ilkley to an Arcadia-esque pub cleverly called "Bar T'at" for more drinks, losing a couple of people along the way who decided to make an early departure.A couple of hours later, it was on the train and back to Leeds following another successful walk led by our tassel-hatted Norwegian. Well done Eirik (and thanks for bailing us out!)