Who was that masked man?

The morning after the night before is usually when I make like the Lone Ranger. Not so much* because I have a horse waiting below my window and I vault effortless over the sill to land accurately - and without apparent testicular damage - in the saddle but more because I like to slip away before anyone notices.

It's not that I'm not a morning person - I most decidedly am - it's much more than I feel like I'm intruding in people's lives if I hang around. You know, when are you good to use the bathroom, that kind of thing. Also, what if their coffee's no good?

So, this morning, I slipped away early, drove down into Holmfirth and then improvised a route back through Halifax and Keighley until I reached Skipton, and there's only one (sensible) route back to Kirkby Lonsdale from there. 

Somewhere north of Halifax you get onto these lovely windy roads that travel across some fairly bleak landscape, occasionally passing through an old stone-built village or town. It's all the more impressive when it's misty like it was this morning, with occasional squalls of rain. It's precisely this part of the country in which my never-finished (and, frankly, barely started) novel, 'The Tally Man', is set. It'd be lovely to come up here and do some writing. I should get on with that.

*At all, in fact.