Since moving to Yorkshire, it's meant getting to the Lake District is a little more difficult. Walking is one of my favourite things, Fraser and I head out at every chance we can and he captures the best moments.
There's just something about getting into the fresh air - its productive and cleansing all at the same time.
Like they say though, when one door closes - a window opens somewhere else and now, being based in Leeds - it means the Yorkshire Dales are just a hop skip and a jump away.
I'm not saying the Dales are as spectacular as my beloved Lakes - but they sure are beautiful. The hills roll on forever and it's so nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and hit the tranquility head on.
For our first trip out - I wanted to visit Malham Cove. A friend of mine had been before and I obviously recognise that stone work from THAT scene in Harry Potter.
Being city based - I'm now car-less. Fras often catches the train up here so he doesn't have to pay for parking. On this particular trip - that's exactly what we did too.
We set off on a miserable October Sunday, to Skipton. We'd googled the best place to travel to by the train and this seemed to be it. Skipton's this lovely little town on the edge of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It's full of small businesses and sandstone and has a bloody corker of a chippy called Bizzie Lizzie's - would highly recommend even just for the name (;
We made full use of the local transport links and caught the Dales bus to Malham - it probably took us around an hour and a half in total to get to the main coach park in the centre of the village.
To be honest, we didn't really know too much about the place so we just started towards signs pointing up to Malham Cove and ended up walking through woodland to Janet's Foss.
Now, Janet's Foss is such a magical little place. It's a fall over Gordale Beck which carries over to the River Aire.
It has such a real sparkly feel about it honestly, you really can believe the stories - local legend says a Fairy Queen called Janet lived at the back of the cave behind the waterfall. With the trees shrouding it from the world above - it really could be a place for a fairy - under cover, as if protected from the outside world.
It's such a lovely place to walk too - there were plenty of dog walkers and photographers around - though we managed to omit them from these snaps; obviously Fraser couldn't help himself. I think you'll agree he did a sterling job - I really feel like he captured the magic of the place.
We carried on along past the fall and up the road for a bite to eat at the little butty van before heading up to Malham Cove itself.
And what a place it was. I know I said I wanted to visit after seeing Harry Potter - but nothing could have prepared me for the scale of the thing. The huge lime stone shelf is carved like scales into the ground. It's tricky to manoeuvre - so you need to make sure you're sure footed up there - not so clever for the shaky legged Baines over here - but it's such a great pay off for the walk.
Fras and I took our time up there and had a bite to eat before taking the steep climb back down - we didn't manage to get any snaps of it as we were reliant on that last bus back to civilisation and found ourselves in a mild panic to get down. When we got back to sea level we took one last look back. Let me tell you, from the bottom the sheer size is impressive enough - let alone the promise of a waterfall with higher rain levels.
Photographs are a challenge for next time I should think.
If you want to see more of Fraser's snaps, head on over to his Instagram.
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