Bank Holiday

Malham Cove

beckyjo125Leave a comment

Easter Monday 6 April 2026

Well there’s a walk to get your step count up!

The spectacular 230 foot limestone cliff of Malham Cove is our destination for a ‘nice Bank Holiday’ walk!

Golly – that looks steep!

Up to this point I am having the loveliest of days. A leisurely lie-in. Chauffered through the Yorkshire Dales by my favourite person. A tasty lunch of soup and sourdough at a trendy Skipton cafe. Blue skies and a rare bit of Spring sunshine and then… one very sheer cliff to scale!

Happily, in an apt analogy of life, climbing it isn’t actually as bad as thinking about it the trek ahead. Yes; there are dusty tracks and around 400 stone steps and yes; I do stop, at least once, feigning interest in ‘the view’ to catch my breath, but before too long we have reached the summit and the famed ‘Limestone Pavement”, resplendent in the April sunshine and a far cry from atmosphere of eerie desolation when it featured in the Harry Potter ‘ Deathly Hallows’ movie. Today by contrast, this maze of eroded limestone blocks is a lively scene of walkers gathering sit and chat, eat and drink and enjoy the view.

As readers of my blog will know, I love a Bank Holiday. Something about the communal day off, just fills the air with shared happiness and joy. Family time, friend time and a seemingly endless length of time. We wend our way back down, find a pub garden for a cheeky beer, before finally heading home.

Good times, good company … what more does anyone want from a day?

Bank Holidays – what’s not to love?

beckyjo125Leave a comment

Monday 1 May 2022

Deborah Meaden and other business leaders grab the headlines this week proposing that 2022’s additional Jubilee bank holiday should be made a permanent fixture of the UK calendar. Well after a truly lovely long weekend, they’ve got my full support!

The joy of a bank holiday Monday! When the shadow of work is pushed into the distant realms of Tuesday, a time so far away that you really do feel motivated to made the most of every minute of the weekend!

I get off to a flying start, with a Friday meal out for me and my 2 younger offspring. On a sunny Saturday, I navigate and jolt along on the bus systems of Lancashire to “do tapas” and a few glasses of wine with some work colleagues. By Sunday, I am visiting family in Ikley, (via a Leeds station to dispatch Prom-dress daughter back on a cross-country train to university-land.) The Yorkshire town is a delight of ‘cafe culture’ with bars and eateries prettily dotted along the high street and proves the perfect venue for a catch-up and a cheeky brunch. The market is in full swing, the bookshops are fantastic, time drifts idyllically by and, not for the first time, I catch myself wondering ‘why don’t I live in a place like this?‘

But … as it turns out…the place where I do live also has something special too offer this weekend.

Back in January, someone I had not seen since my college days got in touch out of the blue. Whilst life distracted me a little in the following months, on Sunday night, we finally manage to meet up and, faced with the challenge of filling in over 35 years, sink a bottle of wine and a few cocktails together. And it is fun. In fact, it is more than fun… it feels like … coming home. “It is amazing’ he texts later, ‘how I can still place the 18 year old Becky, in the Becky of today’. And it is amazing; even a little bit magical to be reminded of who we are inside, when all the layers of life, daily toil and grown-up roles and responsibilities are pushed aside.

And so to Monday! And whilst, after a morning run and a friend visiting for coffee, life loses a little of its holiday sheen and I get back to the more mundane ‘weekend business’ of shopping, washing and work prep, I’ll confess I do it all fairly rapidly, with a happy smile on my face. It it down to the thrill of the day away from work? Or is the buzz from catching up with so many family, friends and a long lost acquaintance? Who can tell? But in a weekend enriched with extra time and space, life certainly feels more ‘lived to the full’ than usual.

More times like this can only be a good thing, so it is a definite thumbs up from me for the establishment of a ‘Thank Holiday in the UK. In fact, if I’m honest … I could happily go for a three day weekend as a permanent hebdomadal pattern in my world!

Welcome to May everyone; let’s hope it is a good month…