High on the cuteness scale

It was another grey morning, but I took Arth for a one mile walk round the village. He objected and I imagined him saying "Are we nearly there yet?" in a whiny tone. We both survived better than previously.

This afternoon I drove to Alston to meet I.F. who is in charge of the new North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Walking Festival. By mistake, the dates of this festival run up to and overlapp with a couple of days of our Autumn Festival. We are looking for ways to work together. Apart from anything else, our festival carries the tag line "your gateway to Hadrian's Wall Country, the North Pennines AONB and Northumberland National Park". A lot of our walks are in the North Pennines.

It was good to meet and to discuss how we might help their new organisation. In future we must make sure that the dates don't clash. They have a good grant to start them off and organisational support from the AONB. We think that there are enough walkers to support both events. I'm going to lead a 15 miler for them in September (assuming I can leave Arth at home by then!!)

While I was waiting for the meeting, this little dog was wandering around the public areas of the hotel and hoovering up left overs. She was happy to come for a few strokes from me.

Lovely people serving in the hotel, but I had a capuccino - bad choice - wished I'd stuck to tea.