I’ve done eight days of walking, one day of rest, and have ten days of walking ahead of me.
Today’s walk is to be an easy 12 miles, mostly flat or gently downhill after ascending to the Nine Standards Rigg. That’s at mile 87 on the official trail, but I’ve put in far more distance thanks to minor miss-takes and detours for nights’ lodgings. This wiggling on and off the trail is different from what I expected: I thought all B&Bs would be right on the trail, with most of the travel basically being village center to village center.
I leave the hostel at 8:30 and reach Nine Standards in a fast two hours. The trail is mostly road and passes by an active quarry before it becomes a gravel or grass path, very wide, well signed, easy to follow, and marked by a few tall cairns made by expert stone masons. I couldn’t get lost if I tried.Walking the path today feels different, though, knowing that Michael, David, Jenny, and Len walked it ahead of me yesterday while I stayed in Kirkby Stephen. Are these boot prints in the dust theirs? I feel less alone on the trail today because friends have been here before me.
Every morning as I leave a town, I look back at how far I’ve come. Today, I can barely see the Lake District hills I labored over just a few days ago; Kirkby Stephen is a double cluster of roofs hugging a north-south stretch of the B6270 road beyond acres of fields.Two other walkers are leaving Nine Standards Rigg as I arrive (I learn later that they are John and Elaine). No one else is here, and for a while I have some time alone with the stones.
The Nine Standards are something that Andy Goldsworthy would dream up. Or perhaps was inspired by. About one and a half to three times the height of a person, each one is a different shape, all in a row, all symmetrical. They’ve been listed on maps since the 1700s and are older than that. Legend tells that the English put them up to make invading Scots think there was an army on the hill. Other theories are that they’re border markers, beacons, or follies erected by bored youths. The artistry and variety are interesting. I wonder whether the shapes have significance.
From the top of Nine Standards Rigg, facing east, nothing awaits me but seven miles of dales—swells of peaty earth covered by purple-belled heather and rush grasses that grow in pointy clumps like green porcupines.
Right now I’m sitting back in a stone-lined hollow to the east of the rock towers to get out of the wind and have a snack and write. It’s cool enough to put on my fleece vest. Three sheep just walked over and started when they saw me. Now they’re standing at the edge, peering down into my wind break like people watching goldfish in a pond, and they’re bleating at me, as if they’re baffled or miffed that I’ve taken over their favorite hovel. The look past me and turn to leave—two large groups of hikers have just joined me the top of the rigg, and now it’s feeling crowded.
The trail leaving the rigg passes a viewpoint marker and an OS trig marker and sets me out on miles of the Yorkshire Dales, which are so low as to be almost flat, with little difference in their undulations except to the trained or familiar eye. They’re named on map, though, with things like Black Hill, Coldbergh Side, White Mossy Hill, and Whitsun Dale. They all look the same to me.
All is mostly silent on the moors. Wind shushes by my ears. An occasional bird calls. Then a fighter jet whizzes by. The growl of its engine rushes from a roar to a shriek, and the air around me seems to shiver with sound. The source of the noise quickly vanishes, but the sound takes a long time to leave the sky.I remember traveling by horseback across moors in Northumbria and being told that horses and livestock sometimes sink knee-deep into peat bogs and are unable to get out. I’ve been worried about this kind of uncertain footing on this part of the walk.
Today, though, almost every beck and gill bed is dry. The week’s unusual heat has caked the moors and left only a few mushy areas covered in rushes to slog through. Weeks-old boot prints are solid and clear, as if set in plaster. I’m grateful for this, having read tales of walkers who had to poke around with trekking poles to find solid ground.
The peaty moors, although dry, still yield a little underfoot, and some areas are almost spongy. Their springiness bounces back up my legs. Downhills are easier on the knees here than on the granite and scrabble and scree of the fells. A simple footbridge stands incongruously in the middle of nowhere to allow passage over a gully that is all but a trickle today.By midday, the sun comes out in earnest from behind low clouds, temperatures rise, and the lack of anything taller than a rush plant becomes more obvious. I am relieved to spot a hunter’s hut, the only thing around that can offer shade for a lunch break. The building is corrugated metal painted black, with dingy windows and a thick wooden table and thick wooden benches inside. The hardware on its door creaks in the wind, as if someone is inside the building, trying to get out.
I take refuge at the north side of the hut, where a welcome slab of shade is already providing respite for Marv, a “Methodist-flavor” minister from Colorado Springs. He’s walking the C2C path as a personal and solitary break from the duties of his work.
Meeting another American on the C2C is refreshing, and we hook up to walk the rest of the way to Keld, loosely following a Dutch couple that Marv has met and being tailed by a group of four who had also joined us at the shade shack. These are Neil, his 14-year-old son, and two other adults. A mile down the trail, Neil rescues and returns my visor to me, which I’d left on the ground while getting gravel out of a boot.
Marv is the one to identify the row of “butts” at the dales that Wainwright talks about. They are just beyond the hunting shack. Butts are semi-circular stone walls that hunters use as blinds when shooting grouse or other field birds. Now I understand why the infamous Butt House in Keld is called that, and I no longer need to feel embarrassed saying its name. (I had tried to get into the Butt House for lodging—it’s run by Mrs. Whitehead, who is old enough to have known Wainwright in his travels—but it was already booked by the time I made reservations early this year.)
At the outskirts of Keld, we pause at Wainwath Falls to watch youngsters and adults splash in the natural pool. Even being near this much water after the dry moors cools me down. A black Yorkie terrier is jumping in and out of the pond, chasing sticks. One moment he’s after a toss, but the next he has abandoned the small catch to go after a tree branch that is floating in the water. Clamping the business end in his jaws, he paddles to shore with fifteen feet of twigs trailing behind him, while his senior-citizen owners applaud and encourage him on from the bank.
Marv and I reach Keld about 3:00, where we split to find our respective lodgings—him at a B&B, me at the hostel. The youth hostel is just down the street and already open. I find my pack waiting, but Elaine and John’s packs are not in the lobby. We use the same van service, so they must have already arrived. I find them in the lounge, along with yet two other Aussies: Matt (also a minister, Catholic, I think) and David. John makes a huge pot of tea for us all, carted in on a broiler pan pressed into service as a tea tray.
Elaine, John, and I walk to the third vertex of the small triangle of roads that define Keld, to the spot that would qualify as “town center.” A dour woman sells us ice cream and postcards from the only grocer in the village. The pocket park outside is crowded, the trashcan overflows with ice cream wrappers, and more people are behind us in line. She, however, doesn’t seem to want to be bothered by all these paying customers.
Outside the store, I spot Marv sitting in the park and eating an ice cream. We all get acquainted at a picnic table under a tree, and we talk with a family of three from Wales at the table next to ours. The boy explains, “We’re on holiday, ‘for the first time in sixteen years,’” as if quoting something he’d heard a thousand times from his parents in the past few days.“And how old are you?” I ask.
“Sixteen,” he nods and grins. We all laugh.
An elderly collie dog, weak in the back legs but clearly still knowing her job, keeps bringing stones for the park guests to toss, and for her to place on the ground and “herd” until she decides to bring it back for another toss. She is as intent as Pip had been in herding chickens. Sad that these dogs need to be retired when all they live for is to gather up anything that moves (or, in this case, doesn’t), including people, kids, and horses.I see lots of familiar faces at this park. Keld is tiny, but everyone who passes through on the C2C walk is likely to stop here. The site is also a crossroads for the Pennine Way walk, 270 miles north-south that isn’t, say most, nearly as scenic or enjoyable as the C2C. Michael told me that the C2C walk has been named No. 2 of the top ten long-distance walks in the world. No question that it gets points for beauty. Keld has more campground space in the neighboring fields than B&B lodgings; most of these hardy folk look like they’re camping.
John, Elaine, and I have dinner at the hostel with Jane and Chris, a couple from England. She goes home from Reeth tomorrow, and he continues to Robin Hood’s Bay by Aug 3, on the same schedule as John and Elaine.
I have a women’s dorm room for twelve all to myself tonight, and had a room for eight all to myself last night at Kirkby Stephen, and shared with only two others the night before that. Yet the hostels have been well-booked for men, so much so that Michael and David often couldn’t get in and had to camp. Aside from Tracy at the beginning of the walk, I’ve seen no other solo women travelers on this tour of the C2C. Couples usually get a room of their own at a hostel, and a few single women are traveling in larger co-ed groups.
Arrival at Keld marks the halfway point of the walk—I’ve traveled almost 95 miles across England on foot, with another 95 miles to go. Some say the walk is 190 miles, while others count it as 192; either way, it certainly gets longer with alternative routes and off-trail detours to spend the night. I’m grateful that the YHA Keld was literally on today’s trail.Trail miles: 11.5; actual miles walked: 11.5
