Shit. Today I’ve successfully trekked an exhausting 13 miles up and over several moors but am almost in tears of frustration at the last 100 yards because no manner of doubling back reveals a way through or over a wall to the yard of Shepherd’s Close Farm, the self-catering B&B I’m at tonight. I am stuck on a forest road that I thought would pass by a stile, but it actually by-passes the farm completely.A long-distance, semaphore-like communication (sweeping arms, compass-directing bodies) with someone in the east-most field indicates I should retrace my steps along the trail, but no overlooked path becomes evident. Another map check reveals the horrible truth: I have overshot a trail that leads to a driveway that’s three pastures long. Repairing the mistake means a hairpin backtrack and reroute of almost a mile to get to the same place that a crow could fly in 70 yards.
Every muscle in my legs and feet are protesting. My heels hurt to stand. My toes hurt to walk. I’ve been up since 5:30a after a poor night’s sleep. My clothes are drying on me from a recent rain, my pack is soggy against my back. I am tired, cranky, frustrated.
Then I remember: “Hey, you’ve got a cell phone.” (This high-tech instrument is new to my repertoire, and I still often forget to use it.)
Whew. The owner is home. She knows where I am on the forest road. She thinks there is a clear way over the fence at the corner of the field by the beck. She’ll come look for me.
A minute later, I see a petite, sandy-haired woman striding across the sheep field in blue jeans, short-sleeved shirt, and green Wellingtons. We meet across the beck, which at its closest point to me is impenetrable with weeds. I find a thin clear spot under the trees (oh, here’s a trail, kind of) to gain access to a barbed wire fence she has just stepped over. She greets me, then turns to step lightly back over the fence (it’s covered with a rubber hose at the crossover point), hustles across the field, and nimbly climbs over a pipe-metal gate to reach the main driveway that I should have been on an hour ago.
I, meanwhile, am mustering all my strength to do the same maneuvers without a) landing my crotch on the barbed wire, b) stumbling lead-footed across the field into another rabbit hole, and c) tangling my feet over the crossbars as I heave my tired legs over the 5-foot gate.
My accommodation tonight is a self-catering cottage attached to a farmhouse—breakfast makings in the fridge, a small kitchen and bath, a fire ready for burning, two beds upstairs. A mini-lodge all to myself. I decline a ride to town for a pub in favor of staying home and eating my leftover lunch for dinner. Mrs A had packed me a double-sized lunch, and I had supplemented half of that with a bowl of chips at a café en route for some hot food on a cold day.After disgorging my bag’s contents and strewing most of my damp things around the living room to dry, I go upstairs and immediately take a nap—a solid hour and a half of deep, drooling sleep. (You always know you’re sleeping deeply if you drool.)
I awake so sore and stiff that I can barely make it down the stairs. Not the good kind of sore and stiff, born of a hard day’s walk of which to be proud, mind you. But the ohmygodI’mgettingtoooldforthis kind of sore and stiff that leaves me clutching at the banister, wincing in pain, and begging my bones not to collapse on every step down. I wonder if this what it feels like to be eighty-nine and arthritic. I wonder if I’ll ever walk upright again. I wonder if I’ll ever want to move again.
Hobbling around the lodge a little improves my mobility and my morale, as does sitting down to make a few phone calls for directions to my next two nights’ lodgings. Tomorrow’s is the worst for added distance—two miles due north off the trail.
Right now I’m making a pot of tea to have with dinner and the shortbread that Chris, the proprietress, has baked. Tea makes everything better, but the shortbread is a tad stale.
So let’s see. Highlights of today. I left Osmotherley at about eight thirty, my belly laden with a full breakfast (including two eggs, not the usual one, and beans that weren’t soupy—yay) and my daypack laden with a full lunch (three small sandwiches on rolls—cheese/pickle, pate, meat; a KitKat, two cherry tomatoes, a box of raisins, a buttered scone, a homemade fruit bar, a homemade lemon muffin, and a homemade raspberry sponge bar. Mrs A knows what walkers need.)The day threatened rain, so I hauled out my rain gear and fleece vest right before I left my bag for the Sherpa Van people. Good thing I did. The weather changed quickly throughout the day, and winds whipped at the top of the moors.
The trail was easy to follow and mostly easy to walk. This part of the C2C coincides with some of the 109-mile Cleveland Way National Trail, as well as with several miles of the 40-mile Lyke Wake Way (LWW). The latter is a race, actually: 40 miles in 24 hours in honor of the supposed path that pallbearers walked to carry corpses over the moors to villages where a church had a consecrated cemetery.
The path went through forests and fern fields, over moors, up and down hills. It’s well used, and to protect the moors from erosion and discourage off-trail foot traffic, much of it is paved with slabs of stone.
Beacon Hill, just outside of Osmotherley, houses a BT satellite station—pretty, in its way, of high-tech steel against a steel-gray sky. The moors I crossed are 1,000 to 1,300 feet high, and the path goes up a lot, down a little, then up some more, until reaching the highest point for today of 1,427 feet at Cringle Moor.
Views were, of course, spectacular, and the clouds and sunlight were constantly changing. It’s no wonder that the top of Carlton Moor is the headquarters for the local gliding club. These windswept hills and the extreme drop-off of Carlton Bank are perfect for catching updrafts for long glides.
I met several members of a Ladies Badminton Club taking a rest at the top of Cringle Moor. During summer they walk instead of play badminton, but today’s loop walk was cut short when thunder started rolling. Being on the moors in a lightning storm isn’t a good idea—you’re the tallest thing around for miles. “We have four seasons in an hour here,” said Dianna (DEE anna), a tall woman sitting next to Margaret on the semi-circular stone seat at the top of Cringle Moor. Today attests to it.
We chatted some, and Margaret perfected my camera enough to take a photo of me against the backdrop of North Yorkshire.Today is Yorkshire Day, according to the BBC radio that was playing over breakfast at Mrs A’s B&B. They were making Yorkshire pudding on the air (!), comparing pudding cooking techniques from listeners, and taking calls from people who were proud to be from Yorkshire. That latter took a couple of pleas—the emcees were distressed that no lads and lasses were calling in to declare loyalty to their venerable heritage.
I met Nico and Marja as I arrived at a stone-walled coffee shop at Green Bank today. This is the only actual on-trail eatery I’ve found so far, aside from when Marv and I passed through villages on the way to Reeth. It certainly feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere. The only thing around it is a parking lot and a park.Nico, Marja, and I had said last night that we’d meet one last time on the trail, and there we all were—me coming in for lunch, them leaving from lunch. We said hello, then farewell, and they invited me to stay at their home if I go to Amsterdam before I leave for the US.
Throughout the day, I got passed by, then I passed, then I got passed again by the New Zealand Pack ’n’ Boots hiking group of five. I wonder how John and Elaine are doing—they’re supposed to be at Blakey Howe by the end of the day today. David and Michael should be arriving at Robin Hood’s Bay tomorrow...wow, the end of the trail.
Dianna and Margaret told me about an easier route around the last moor (Cold Moor, the one straight ahead in this photo) and the famous Wainstones at Hasty Bank that Wainwright (no relation) tells about. My knees were beginning to ache badly on the downhill walks from Cringle Moor, so I decided to follow their advice and avoid that final hill for the slightly longer route around the base. It had the added advantage of skirting an evergreen forest (Broughton Plantations), which provided cover in a brief spell of rain.
I did take a quick detour up to the Wainstones, which rock climbers love, and they seem like boulders that someone would scrabble over easily. I often see shapes in these kinds of things, and one of them looked like a giant fox head sniffing at the air.The path to Shepherd’s Close Farm leaves the C2C trail at Clay Bank. Just as I split off from it, the heavens opened with a light, pattering rain that didn’t stop until I was near to crying on that damned forest road, fruitlessly looking for a way in to the farm and rest.
Already, that frustration is dissolving—I’m fed, cleaned up, tea’d up, and getting more relaxed by the minute. The sky is aglow with a gorgeous sunset, the kind of light that comes with storm and fast-moving clouds. I can hear dozens of wood pigeons in the forest and the cackle of pheasant across the field. A warm bed beckons, and I’ll turn in early tonight.Trail miles: 11; actual miles walked: 12
