C2C Day 14, Osmotherley (Mile 141.5)—Motherly, Yes; Oz, No.

Off at a little past eight-thirty this morning from The Old School House, fortified with a famously huge English breakfast from Frank and Doreen. I travel with John and Elaine today, our last day on the same schedule.

After an encounter with a child-eating troll (one of many from a recent scarecrow competition), fields and some road-walking face us most of the way. I have left my trekking poles for the Sherpa folks to take to Osmotherley and am glad for the reprieve from hauling them around. I expect I’ll need them the next two days, though, as I head into another strand of fells to ridge-walk.


We are at one of the many dairy farms on the route when I stop to tighten my bootlaces and John and Elaine walk on ahead. I see a milk tanker around the bend and, sure enough, I catch up to find my very outgoing friends talking with the crew—Diane and a coworker who are shunting milk from a 15700-litre tank to a 27000-litre tank for delivery to Osmotherley. A just-born calf is in a field nearby, bright white and black from mom’s cleaning, still too weak to stand.

John and Elaine later tell me that Diane had offered us all a lift to Osmotherley, but they had declined.

“Why’d you do that?” I say only half-jokingly. I would have turned it down, too, but the dream of a ride is tempting. Dang.











It’s another easy walking day—all flat until the last two miles through Cleveland Forest, which feels and looks like it’s been lifted right from the foothills of Mt Rainier, only with a wide gravel truck track instead of foot trail. The weather stays with us all day, windy, alternately warmish/coolish, with gray clouds rolling in by the afternoon. We pass over train tracks and rickety bridges, and by new construction, old ruins, and a beautiful private farm/garden at Ingleby Cross.

We have a lunch break in the woods at Cleveland Forest, where John sets up their camp stove to make their usual batch of Australian billy tea. He shows me how to swing the covered kettle like a man pitching a baseball, ostensibly to swirl the tea in the water before steeping and pouring. Given that centrifugal force is at work, I more wonder whether it’s really just a way to squeeze the teabag without touching it.


A spate of rain comes as we leave our protected spot for lunch, but not enough to do more than wet the road. We part company shortly after, so John and Elaine can get a couple more miles in tonight on the trail and cut their longer day short tomorrow. We’re to meet for dinner in Osmotherley, which is a mile off the track and on the famous Cleveland Way trail that the C2C is just about to intersect with for a while.


I get to Osmotherley around 2:30 and walk the extra mile beyond town to get to my B&B. It’s clearly too early for check-in, for the proprietress isn’t home, so I head back to the village to kill some time. I buy the last two OS maps for the walk, poke into a few stores, and take a pot-for-one earl grey tea and toasted tea bread at a coffee shop.

As I explore the town, I fall into conversation with the keepers of the various shops, and the topic inevitably turns toward lodging. When I tell them of my B&B, two of the proprietors give me odd looks I can’t quite interpret, but a third responds with, “Ah.” Pregnant pause. “Mrs A.”

As this is the third such reaction, I’m feeling more than a twinge of worry. I look him in the eye from across the counter. “How is Mrs A?”

He looks left and right before answering, as if making sure none of his customers can overhear. His voice is low. “She’ll keep you in order.”

Oh great. The lady has a reputation—but for what? Gorgon? Busybody? Drill sergeant?

I take the return walk to the B&B, hoping that by now my hostess is home. Halfway there, a woman in her late 40s, with a pageboy haircut and a black-and-white collie, crosses the street toward me and indicates the threatening gray skies.

“Won’t rain!” she assures me. “I’ve got my umbrella!” She waves a folded collapsible red unit at me.

“Thanks!” I grin back.

As I arrive at my lodging, I meet a friend of Mrs A’s leaving the house.

“Staying here?” asks the tall blonde, middle-aged woman. “You’re in good hands. She’ll take good care of you. I’ll call you later, my dear!” The woman waves goodbye to me from her car, and one concern is removed. Probably not the town Gorgon.

Then Mrs A herself, plump, blonde and bustling, greets me busily in the small fore room and points to a chair like a woman used to giving orders. “Sit there. Take your boots off. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you. I just had some at the coffee shop—”

A scandalized look. “You’ve already had tea?”

“Well, I got in early, and you weren’t at home, so I went back to town—”

“Come in here.”

I follow her into the kitchen, where an ironing board is set up and smells of fresh soap permeate. She returns to ironing a bottom bedsheet, nosing the iron into the elasticized corners.

“Your room’s up there,” she says in a clipped, crisp voice. “A stair leads up at the left. I’ll take you there in a minute.” A penetrating look. “You sure you don’t want tea?”

“No, thank you, really—”

“Your bag’s arrived. I even took it upstairs for you. It’s heavy, you know.”

I nod. All I want to do is go to that room and flop down on the bed. My legs ache. I stand politely, shifting weight from one tired heel to the other while she continues her ironing, and begin to understand what the villagers meant about Mrs A.

“My friend there who just left?” she is saying. “She shouldn’t be driving. Just had cataract surgery three days ago. She shouldn’t be driving, should she? ‘Should you be driving?’ I asked her. ‘Does your doctor tell you it’s OK to drive?’ ‘No,’ she says to me, ‘but don’t tell anybody.’ She dropped the remote control for the TV yesterday and a button fell off. She’s taking it to the shop to get it mended, can you believe that? Doesn’t want her husband t’know she’s broken it, so she has to drive now, doesn’t she?”

She sets the iron aside, matches corners of the sheet, and folds it into a tidy white package to join its mate on a rack hanging from the ironing board stand. “Did you get rained on today?”

“Only a sprinkle.”

“I hung the towels out to dry three times today. Just put them out again. You’ll be wanting a shower, right? You can have a bath if you want. Water’s already hot.”

She finally shows me to my room, explains the shower, takes my breakfast reservation for 7:30, and goes downstairs to “tidy up the twin room.” The place has lots of religious overtones—inspirational poems and prayers taped to the bathroom walls and hall walls and bedroom walls. My room is comfortable, with its own sink, and the bathroom is done in pale purples—a good vote in my book. Once I settle in, my motherly hostess leaves me very much to myself.

I make one more trip back to the village that evening for a farewell dinner with Nico, Marja, Elaine, and John at The Golden Lion. There’s a good chance of seeing Marja and Nico tomorrow, but not Elaine and John, who now are hoofing it to reach Robin Hood’s Bay by August 3.

“The next time we see you will be in Australia,” they promise. I’m looking forward to it already.

Tomorrow’s walk begins across the Cleveland hills into North York Moors national park. Before all this farmland, I’ve been traveling through the Yorkshire Dales, Herriott country. Before that, the Lake District was dominated by Beatrix Potter and William Wordsworth. Coming up are some of the stomping grounds of the Brontës—misty inspiration for those haunting scenes in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.

I have reached mile 141.5 of 190 miles across England, or page 122 of 160 pages of the Wainwright book, or day 12 out of 18 actual walking days. Whatever way I do the math, my feet held up better today, although the inside of my heels seem to be taking a beating. More wool!

With less than a week to go on the C2C, I look forward to several days afterward in York to rest, catch up on Internet/blog time (I’m way behind), and just be in one place after moving one day to the next for this long.

Trail miles: 13; actual miles walked: 19

C2C Day 13, Danby Wiske (Mile 129.5)—Sensory Perceptions

Going to bed last night at 8:30, I sleep through until 5:15. I am feeling refreshed, although my left ankle still hurts more than the right every morning. Some deep-tissue strokes ease the stiffness. I’m also using less lamb’s wool around my toes now, relying mostly on fabric bandaids. The plastic ones don’t work nearly as well—they make scratchy corners wherever they fold.

Today is the second to the last day my itinerary matches with John and Elaine’s. Osmotherley will be our last supper. Tonight is Danby Wiske, at mile 129.5.

I check out of The Old Brewery at 8:45 and meet up immediately (though without preplanning) with Nico and Marja and John and Elaine near the trailhead. Leaving Richmond with an up-the-cliffs view of its castle, we take a brief sidetrip through some brush to view the local step waterfalls of the river, which needs more water this time of year. Nico and Marja ultimately split off from the rest of us and we catch each other on the trail at intervals throughout the day.






Today’s 12+ mile walk grows to over 14, thanks to my decision to join John and Elaine off track to avoid four miles of road walking. Instead we take a longer but scenic trip along public footpaths that pass through or alongside crop fields—wheat, barley, beets, broad beans, chamomile, corn, stubble cut to the ground, some grain fields half harvested. My bare calves and the backs of my hands get up close and personal with stinging nettles, poky blackberries, prickly thistles, scratchy rushes, soft grasses, furry barley stalks, hard wheat heads, warm sun, cool breezes, and hot sun.


The summer heat has been harsh. The soil is dry, the ground is cracked, and the becks are barely trickling, if at all. Recently plowed fields have crusty, sculpted furrows that are hard on the feet and ankles. We walk among mine fields of dried cow patties, over crunchy stubble, and on sliding straw bleached by the sun.

The view is fields and fields and fields—which is why this area is Wainwright’s least favorite part of the walk. He hates the dales. He says there’s not enough elevation and too much trudging. Trudging it may be, but trekking over farmland, gravel roads, and grassy fields is easy, and the level walking is occasionally relieved by uneven ground, many step-stiles, and boundary crossings over barbed wire wrapped in yellow plastic bags.


One town we go through, Brompton-on-Swale, has a race track (there’s an event today, and crossing the main street takes a dose of nerve) and a hotel whose sign makes us laugh outloud: “HAVING AN AFFAIR? Special room rates available.”


Puffy clouds move across the sky. We have an eleven o’clock break with Marja and Nico (“elevensies” as John and Elaine call it) trailside at the top of a shaded hill, take lunch under trees by the River Swale (yes, we’ve been three days on the same river...), and have a three o’clock stop in a very buggy Douglas fir glade.

Every day’s walk has been different, with just enough variety from what I’ve seen before to keep me looking around. Yet by the end of the last mile, I’m done with the sameness of that day. And I’m done with walking it. This day-in, day-out trekking is hard on my feet and ankles, and I sometimes swallow a whine and a groan when yet another mile of anything lies ahead of me. I’m glad I didn’t create a 20-mile day anywhere on my itinerary. Twelve to sixteen miles is more than enough.


We get to Danby Wiske at five with great gratitude. Frank and Doreen of The Old School B&B take us right in as their own, whisking our boots away for a good airing, giving us tea and refreshments (gingerbread, cheddar cheese, a milk chocolate Penguin cookie bar), and settling us into our rooms. Mine is upstairs, cozy and warm. Our hosts even trust us enough to leave their house to our care as they head out for a family party. Doreen was coloring her hair when we arrived, and she goes out looking smashing in a black and white number that molds to her plump, buxom, hippy body as if it were painted on.

We meet Marja and Nico and a group of five New Zealanders at the White Swan pub in Danby Wiske for dinner. It’s the only pub in town. The Kiwis are the same Pack ’n’ Boots hiking group I met at Kirkby Stephen YHA. Some friendly Aussie/Kiwi competition goes on between them and John and Elaine before everyone calls a truce and we order meals.

My food tonight is a venison beef pie with a puff pastry placed on top like a crispy, golden brown hat. We receive a heaping bowl of new potatoes and another of peas and carrots to share around the table, and I polish off a boat of strawberries in fresh cream for dessert. The pub, surprisingly, has Internet, and I spend a half hour catching up on e-mail before turning in for the evening.

Sheesh. Mile 129.5. Compared to the Roman marches and travels that others have made over the ages, that’s not much—11 mikes a day average. But for me it’s an accomplishment.

I like this rhythm of walking, the new views, the daily tedium, the hunting for trails and signposts, the meeting of new friends, the fresh shower and bed at the end of the day. I suppose as I do this more, longer days will be easier, although the longer walks equal more hours in a day on the road. Walking from 9 to 3 seems most comfortable to me, but I usually end later.

Trail miles: 12.5; actual miles walked: 14.5

C2C Day 12, Richmond (Mile 117)—Taking Tea and Time

I wake at five o’clock to a blush of pink over the moors in the east. August is almost here, and dawn is already coming late enough for me to see it at a semi-decent hour. The sun is bright at 7:30—another warm cloudless day ahead.

Breakfast at Hillary House this morning includes a homemade damson jam for my toast. It’s a dark purple, plum-berry-like fruit that’s not too tart or too sweet. I wonder if they sell it in the US. My breakfast companions are a pair of travelers who are doing the Herriott Way walk in two days instead of the usual four to five. I don’t get that kind of drive, but they are avid about their trip and its details.

It is indeed Herriott country that I’ve been in the past few days, and the farms are far apart and sprawling. I can understand how making one house call to inoculate sheep could take him all day. This area is also, to my surprise, Wensleydale cheese country, as I discovered while reading a brochure at Keld YHA. Who else but Wallace and Gromit smile from the top of a brochure beneath a talk balloon of “Crackin’ good cheese!” The endorsement is for the Wensleydale Cheese Factory in Hawes, south of Keld. (Unwittingly, Wallace’s passion for the cheese ended up bringing the Wensleydale dairy farm from the brink of bankruptcy, and it’s now thriving quite nicely.) For the first time on this trip, I wish I had a car to drive out to places like that on a lark; I’ve bought Wendsleydale with cranberries in Olympia, and can now give the experience a good mental image of its source.

I set out alone from Reeth today at about 8:45, despite the fact that I’ve got five friends on the same trail to Richmond. Not everyone gets going in the morning at the same time, though, and it seems to work best that we all leave at our own rate.

This eleventh day of walking is another day of passing through villages linked by miles of farmland, hay fields, pastures, and some road walking. The path roughly follows the River Swale but isn’t close to the water for very long like it was yesterday. There’s no one’s back garden to walk through, and I meet up with the usual unperturbed cows, and sheep that scatter or don’t, depending on their temperament. I end up spending the whole day alone and am grateful for the eleven miles and several hours to myself.


Beyond Grinton Bridge outside of Reeth, right before a farm road junction, I walk across the field of an underground bee colony. They all buzz a tremendous buzz at heel level, diving into tiny holes in the dirt, swarming over bumblebees that they carry off, hovering over the ground at boot-sole height. I walk with them for about 100 yards, and they move aside from my feet. None of them come after me, and they seem docile as I stoop in for a closer view.

In the Steps Wood, I go up a mini Pilgrim’s Way, a set of some 375 flagstone steps reminiscent of those at St Michaels Mount in Cornwall, or Rocamodor in France, only a lot shallower. This is a path that nuns from over the hill would take to visit the monks-only abbey behind me at Marrick Priory (now in ruins).

At Marrick, the first village I come to today, I can’t quite figure out the right roads using the Footprint map, so I hail a woman who is driving down the street in an ATV. She is suntanned, wearing a pink tank top and shorts, and hauling an open cart that has two freshly shorn sheep inside.

“Is this the way for the Coast to Coast path?” I ask as she slows down beside me on the narrow road. I indicate what I think is the correct left-hand turn coming up.

“Oh, you’re on the wrong road, love. This road will send you right back round where you came from.”

Sheesh. I’ve done it again. We poke at the map, and then she directs me with a rapid string of instructions and corresponding arm movements. “Back up this road, straight up that road there, past the phone box, past the old school house, take a track that crosses the field and passes Nooncootsnuuk” —it looks like Nun Cotes Nook on the map, and like nothing she’s pronouncing—“and then follow it along through the fields. Stop in at Elaine’s Tea Shop. It’s at Nooncoots. Tell her Ruth sent you. That’s me. You’ll have to walk 50 yards off the track. Just came from there m’self. Cheers!”

I thank her, grateful that I’ve once again avoided a lengthy off-trail detour and re-track because someone was around to ask right when I hit a sticky bit. I marvel that such resources are always at hand when I need them.

I meet up briefly with Nico and Marja at the other end of Marrick and walk with them down a sloping large field before we part so that I can take tea at Elaine’s. As I learned at Shap, never pass up a personal invitation from a local.

I expect Elaine’s Tea Shop to be a storefront establishment in a little village called Nun Cotes Nook. It’s actually the front glassed-in conservatory of a private farmhouse overlooking fields and moors.

A tall woman in a cotton skirt and Snoopy tank top is vacuuming the tearoom as I arrive, and the tables and chairs are in disarray.

“Are you open?” I ask, climbing the steps to the door. It’s only about ten o’clock, after all. “I met your friend Ruth a few minutes ago. She suggested I drop in.”

“Oh, yes, yes. I’d love to have you. I’m Elaine.” She drags the vacuum away and straightens the furniture. “Pardon the mess.”

She places a menu on the tablecloth and turns down the volume on the TV in the corner. A cooking show is on. I sit down with the menu. The array of pies, cakes, and other goodies is astonishing for a private establishment like this.

“Everything there is homemade,” Elaine says proudly. “Jams, cakes, scones. I used to run a B&B but dropped back to teas once the children were born. We also have camping grounds, and I cook dinners and breakfasts for them.” I suspect she’d grow the tea herself if she could.

“How many children?”

“Five. All of them are at home because of school holiday. I can’t wait for six more weeks to be up!”

I place an order for cream tea. I haven’t done many “official” teas on this trip, what with the B&B and hostelling, and I’ve been hankering for one.

Elaine gives me a slightly worried look. “It’s homemade jam—is that OK?”

“Is that OK! I won’t have my jam any other way if I can help it!”

A lovely breeze crosses through the room. The tea is hot, the scone fragrant from the oven, and the raspberry jam juicy. I am on my last bites of jammy-creamy scone when I spot Marv come over the hill and continue on the trail in the distance. I consider running out to call him in, then decide I prefer the solitude today. Perhaps we’ll meet up in Richmond.

I buy a bag of crisps and a bottled water from the refrigerator in the tearoom to supplement my sack lunch, and take a few minutes more to chat with Elaine before she directs me to where the trail picks up straight across her field and over her stone wall.

Cell reception is finally available now that I’m up over the hill from the river, and as I walk I discover yesterday’s voicemail from Michael to take the low road to Reeth. It’s good to hear his voice on my phone. I reach them on David’s mobile to check in. They’re on their way to Danby Wiske today (my own stop tomorrow) and doing well.

Wild raspberries grow along the way in the forests and along roadsides. They are tiny and sweet, although just starting the season. I reach the next town, Marske, near lunchtime. I’ve been five miles on trail so far. The fact that I covered that mileage in two hours, which included a 40-minute tea break, attests to the ease of today’s walking.

I sit on a stile beyond Marske to eat my crisps and take a rest to enjoy the view of the Yorkshire dales. As I leave the stile, I see another group coming behind me. I wave, some wave back, and I expect that they will catch up as I work my way across Paddy’s Bridge over Clapgate Beck and up a hillside, but they don’t. (Turns out that Marv had joined that group for a bit; they had some children who slowed the pace.)

I eventually leave them behind past a huge cairn that’s painted a ghastly white and wend my way through faded paths across the land of the Applegarths—Applegarth Scar, Applegarth Low Wood, West Applegarth farm, Low Applegarth farm, High Applegarth barn, and East Applegarth farm. Who the heck are these people?

The path follows the base of Whitcliffe Scar (a limestone embankment whose primary claim to fame is that a fellow named Robert Willance and his horse fell off it in 1606—he survived, the horse didn’t) and enters a lush and shady Whitcliffe Wood. Just out of the woods, I meet a lady and her Lakeland Terrier—a cute little dog bred to go after foxes in their holes in order to flush them out for the hunt. She is meeting her husband and daughter later for dinner in Marske. They are taking the high road over the hills while she does the more restful forest walk. They’re all going to Connecticut in October for the fall color, and she’s very excited about it.

I express how beautiful I think this region of the UK is, and she waves a hand as if to shush me. “We locals keep the Yorkshire Dales a secret from those in southern England,” she says like a conspirator. “Don’t want everyone coming up here, you see. The weather is a lot drier because of the Pennines. But the northern storms don’t go around you, they go through you. You get cold right to your bones.” Hmmm. I might reconsider moving here, then.

I arrive at Richmond at two o’clock, my earliest day yet on the trail. My feet and ankles feel like they’ve walked a lot more than eleven miles, however.


The Old Brewery Pub and Hotel where I’m staying is at the bottom of the hill at the west end of Richmond. It has great access for the trail tomorrow—the path practically begins right outside my door—but the location also means two more miles round trip to eat in town with John and Elaine as we’d planned. My end-of-walk routine is, well, routine by now, so I take care of my check-in, change shoes and clothes, freshen up, and head back up the hill.

Richmond is a regular city, feeling larger than Kirkby Stephen and Shap and Grasmere combined, and a lot busier. They have a huge co-op, which I shop at for a snack, and lots of traffic. I check out the library for Internet, but it has just closed—drat, another missed opportunity.

I am walking to Elaine and John’s B&B at the far end of French Gate when I pause at the beginning of the street to photograph it. This row reminds me of Bath. I hear my name called. It’s Marv, hailing me from the B&B I am standing in front of. We visit in the front room for a bit, then he jumps up from the sofa pointing to the window: “There are Elaine and John!”

Sit in one place long enough and the world passes you by.

We all agree to meet in two hours to go to dinner. John and Elaine will scope out Richmond, Marv will rest and get cleaned up for the evening, and I decide to sit in the aging leather wingback chair in the cozy front room of Marv’s B&B and write in my journal for two hours.

I have been struck today by how the path was often faint, yet I could always follow it because of some far-off fingerpost or offbeat C2C way-marker. I followed painted yellow dots on stiles, yellow buckets overturned on posts, and poles wrapped in plastic yellow grain bags. I could usually see only a short stretch of the path at a time, but every time I needed another marker it was there. And any time I felt worried about being off track, there was always a local on an ATV, an old man sitting on a bench, or a farmer in his yard to talk with for directions.

I knew the basic direction—thataway, east—and the rest took care of itself one field crossing at a time.

My life ahead can be like that. A faint path here, a rocky road there, an occasional hill or scramble. But always the ready signposts, the sufficient resources, the unexpected rest stops, the welcome support and lodgings along the way. My life can be a continuous coast to coast walk if I let it.

Trail miles: 11; actual miles walked: 13+