We slept fantastically in our luxurious king-size bed and awoke in the morning just in time to head down to breakfast. Unsurprisingly the hotel breakfast was wonderful, with a full Yorkshire Breakfast (not sure how it was different to a full English, but anyway), yoghurt and mostly importantly – decent coffee! Once we’d eaten, we headed back and packed up the room before checking out, thanking the hotel and wandering over to the others’ Airbnb, where we were dropping our bags for the morning. Bryan and Ros were happy to potter around in the morning but Aurelia wanted to join Micky, Simon, Peter and I for a walk up to Malham Cove. 

There was a footpath signposted to the Cove from the YHA where Micky and Simon were staying, so we followed their lead. The path led through stiles and fields across the landscape towards the Cove that we could see in the distance – high limestone cliffs that are also a Harry Potter filming location (hence the popularity of the area). We joked about all of the ‘no picnic!’ signs along the way and mostly just chatted for the short 20-minute walk.

Just before the downhill track to the entrance to the Cove, we came across a group of cows in the way of the path. Micky and Simon were ahead of us and took the strategy that we’ve generally used, just slowly making their way around the group keeping a fair distance. However, just as they were approaching the path that led over the edge of the hill, one of the cows started to approach Simon and it was at that point that we realised they were bulls. He slowly backed away from it, but it suddenly tossed its head and charged him and he bolted. Luckily the bull didn’t seem to have its full heart in the enterprise, as Simon was easily outpacing it, but as they curved around the field we realised it was coming back towards us. Peter, Aurelia and I quickly dove over the steep edge of the hill – for me unfortunately straight into a prickle bush.  Looking back, I saw the cow looking over the edge, so good thing I moved when I did! We scrambled down the hill and over the wall into the next field – only to notice a break in the wall at the bottom of the field. We carefully followed the wall to a gate and made our way over to the path. Micky and Simon had also found their way to the path on the other side and after a bit of a shaky check-up with each other (and picking prickles out of my hands and legs!) we kept walking into the Cove.

After all of that excitement, we had a fairly gentle meander around the bottom of the Cove admiring the looming stone walls, before deciding to walk up to the top. It was a very steep staircase up the cliff, but nothing we haven’t done in the last few days! At the top we checked out the limestone ‘pavement’ that is famous both for geological reasons and for its appearance in the second-last Harry Potter film (when they’re travelling around the country escaping from Voldemort’s people). Aurelia was keen to keep walking, but it was quite a long loop around to some other locations and we needed to get back and eat some lunch before our bus, so Peter, Micky, Simon and I walked back to town.

In the fields by the path on the way back there were more docile cows which we carefully crept around, but for the most part it was an easy walk on a paved footpath. We arrived back at the Airbnb and settled down in the café downstairs for a cup of tea and some entertainment in the form of a very friendly cat that decided that Simon was the person to choose for attention. At around 12:30 we ordered some lunch, only to find an enormous line and quite a wait for the food!  Luckily it arrived just in time for us to shovel it down and say goodbye to everyone before Micky, Simon, Peter and I headed for the bus. It was a 40-minute ride into Skipton, where we checked out a cool move-able canal bridge near the station before getting on the train to Leeds.