C2C Days 8&9, Kirkby Stephen (Mile 83)—Fish & Nips, and All the Rest

While my Orton B&B hosts may have left my in-take experience something to be desired, they make up for it with breakfast. They work as a team to feed a dozen of us at once in two rooms—the glassed-in patio and the front family room. I eat in the family room with Michael and David and a couple I haven’t met before. The breakfast is as good as they come, and my hostess packs a huge lunch for me before I go.

I leave Orton/Raisbeck at 8:25a and am quickly caught up by Michael and David just outside the stone circle that marks a right-hand turn onto four miles of moors. Today turns out to be a level walk overall, with 12 miles of mostly undulating grassland and prickling grass and thistles. We travel to the sound of baaing sheep, buzzing insects, and mooing, heavy-bodied, heavy-uddered cows and meet only a few people on the trail.

The Pennine mountains slowly grow bigger ahead of us and the Lake District hills slowly grow smaller behind us. I look back on the trail today and marvel that I’ve actually walked from the other side of those hills.


The day is hot and breezy on the high spots, hot and still on the low spots. The temps have remained in the upper 20s (28C=82F) and are supposed to reach 30C today. The trail is mostly obvious, with only the occasional need for map checks on the moors, which swallow footsteps into trackless land. Stone walls are almost always on our right or left to act as our path guides.

It is over one of those moors that I learn OS Map Rule #3: Follow the map, but remember to check it against reality. Michael, David, and I had merrily followed a path through heather and grasses and come out at a road as expected. The map said to jog left to the north, then hairpin south at a V junction in the road. However, the actual trail, trodden by hundreds of boots before us, had diverted from the mapped path and taken us south to the V junction itself, and I hadn’t noticed it. Ignoring what the roads looked like, I was ready to direct us up the hill to find an intersection that doesn’t exist. I’m glad Michael did a backup map check while we rested.


My body today feels strong and healthy in heart and lung, and my legs are getting stronger for sure. My feet are holding up well overall, my left ankle is good despite my fall in that rabbit hole two days ago, but wow do my knees feel every downhill step, especially on the steep track we take down to Smardale Bridge.


This bridge seems to stand in the middle of nowhere in the distance, as if it once had a greater purpose than it does now. Which is probably true, in that people probably crossed it to get to the now disused railway and quarry nearby.

When we finally get close to the bridge, I laugh out loud. Clustered under it are a handful of people, every one of them doing the same thing I’m fantasizing about—getting out of the blazing heat and dangling their bare feet in the brook. Michael, David, and I clamber over a rickety wooden fence to join them and eat lunch. Their group is so big that there’s no room left under the bridge; we sit in the sun, but our feet are in the water. I find home-baked cinnamon and gingerbread cookies in my packed lunch.

The others under the bridge are folks I haven’t met yet on the trail. Most of them are in their twenties or thirties. They soon finish their foot soaks and depart for the trail. We take over their space in the cool shadow of the bridge. Small, dark fish dart around our feet, and they begin to nibble my toes. It tickles, and I let them do their plecostomus act, working at my skin like those fish that clean the algae off aquarium glass. These fish must like whatever juice my feet produce, for my toes come out very clean.

This area, according to Wainwright, is particularly rich in mostly unexplored archeological finds. The clear remains of the Severals Village Settlement are next to the bridge. And “giant’s graves”—long “pillow mounds” of earth visible on the hillsides after we leave the bridge—remain a mystery as to their origin and purpose. Michael likes reading the history here and pauses to take photos of the mounds that little Perry can’t zoom to.

The walk continues easily from Smardale Bridge over more and more flatland. We come across a herd of cows who walk along with us for a stretch, and pause to watch four sheep dogs and a man on an ATV herd sheep into a pen for dipping. ATVs are big here for all kinds of farm and ranch work, and for zipping into the nearest village to run errands.



Our last bit of road today is the most harrowing: after walking through another of those farmer’s dairy yards, we get squeezed into a hedgerow by a milk tanker coming at us down a single-lane path. He can’t back up, and we can’t go anywhere but into the bushes. We all press deeply into the hedge, and I feel a fence stop my backpack. I tuck in my toes, the driver slows to a crawl, and the long tanker flows by us, its silver surface reflecting the scene all out of proportion like some bizarre fun-house attraction on wheels. We all laugh, give him a wave, and head out toward residential streets.

“Now which way into town?” asks David, just as I spot a pointer sign in someone’s front garden: That way to town. I laugh: “Ask and ye shall receive, David!”

We stop a couple of teenagers for directions to the hostel (for me) and the campground (for Michael and David). The sites are in opposite directions, and we part company with plans to meet for dinner at the Wainwright Chip Shop, where we’re also supposed to sign the official en route C2C book.

The YHA rooms aren’t open for use yet, but my bag has arrived. I drop my gear with it and go out for a look around town. I hear my name called and turn around. John and Elaine are coming down the sidewalk on their way to their hotel, where Jenny and Len are also staying. We exchange greetings and travel notes (we were apparently leaving Smardale Bridge just as they were coming down the hill to it), and they’ve heard about a good pub to go to—the Black Bull. We agree to meet for drinks at 6.

I had planned to spend one night in Kirkby Stephen (pronounced Kirby Steven) and two nights in my next stop, Keld, for a day of rest. Upon seeing Kirkby Stephen, however, I decide to change plans and take my rest-day here instead. The town’s YHA is ideal for a break—a big converted Methodist church (complete with a stained glass rose window); it has wooden pews and huge tables for the dining area and full laundry facilities. It’s near the post office, so I can mail away stuff I don’t need, and it allows hostelers access during the day, which means I can have a comfortable place to work on my journal and scrapbook on my day off. I’ve also been told that Keld is a very small village, with few to no amenities, including no post office, and no bank. I’m running low on cash and most of the B&Bs I’m in don’t take credit card, so a bank run is a must. Besides, John and Elaine are also staying an extra day here, which means we might be able to travel to Keld together.

The fish shop where David, Michael, and I are to eat tonight is at the far end of town, but the place is closed on Tuesdays (today) and Wednesdays. So no chance of signing that C2C book, after all. I call David and Michael to break the news. David answers his cell phone while he’s in the shower(!), and we agree to meet the others for dinner at The Black Bull.

I return to the hostel feeling exhausted. I sprawl out on a sofa near the dining room and fall fast asleep. An hour later, I wake to find a pile of huge backpacks collected near mine, but no one around. It’s almost check-in time, and I’m first in line for a ladies bunkroom—the “Aisle” next to “Altar”—that ends up being almost empty both nights I’m here.

I eat dinner with all my friends at The Black Bull amid much laughter and a bit of sadness for me—this is the last night everyone’s itineraries match, and it’s farewell for me to four. Michael and David finish on Aug 2, John and Elaine on Aug 3, Jenny and Len on Aug 4, and I on Aug 5. Only John and Elaine’s schedule matches mine for a couple more days. Michael, David, and I promise to e-mail photos and to text each other messages of our progress.

I wonder who else I’ll meet in the slower days ahead, and I feel a familiar insulation close around me. I’ve built friendships by walking common ground, often on very challenging terrain, from the start of the walk. I’ll be starting that friend-building process again on the second half of the walk, quite possibly with new groups that have already formed. I’ve also given some thought to what comes after the C2C, and have decided to stay in one place for five days or so before returning to London for my last few days of this amazing holiday. Where that “one place” will be is still up for grabs.

* * *

Day 2 in Kirkby Stephen starts with a decent night’s sleep and the chance to laze in bed until breakfast at 8. I have run of the place for the day, and it’s not crowded except for the breakfast period. A New Zealand group of five, some sporting T-shirts that show a cartoon cat wearing hiking shoes and a “Pack ’n’ Boots” name, are staying at the hostel. I realize I had also seen them intermittently on the trail from Smardale Bridge to Kirkby Stephen yesterday.

Kirkby Stephen is the kind of town I could live in. It has all the stores and amenities I prefer: grocers, a few restaurants, coffee shops, a co-op, library, post office, banks, etc., but no Starbucks and Marks & Spencer. An old-fashioned main street goes through the center of town, and residences pile up on either side behind the merchant streets. The larger stores are within driving distance.

Today’s weather was supposed to be another scorcher or a thunderstorm, neither of which materialize by the afternoon. The sky is flat white, the temps cooler with sunshine.

I spend the morning in my room at the hostel, doing all my laundry, naming all my photos, and processing which OS maps I can mail to Norman and Jean now that I’m done with them. I’ll be able to give them a good collection for their own walks.

I emerge for lunch and shopping around 12:30 and go to the Pink Geranium for my favorite kind of meal—a ploughman’s lunch. I buy a new, higher quality compass (at Michael’s recommendation) and go to the library in hopes of using the Internet. I meet Elaine and John there (no surprise!), but can’t get into my e-mail because my GoDaddy account doesn’t support the older Internet Explorer 5.5, which this library still uses. Sheesh. Another strikeout. And another reminder that the rest of the world doesn’t live and die by the latest technology the way we seem to in Seattle.

Three hours at the hostel dining room means I finally complete my scrapbook for the trip. I haven’t been collecting memento scraps since Inveraray, so it is easy to finish the last pages. I scribble some notes about my time in Inveraray, Jura, Torlundy, and the walk so far. The pages seem spare by comparison to the first half of the trip. I’ve done and consumed much less in the past month, yet I feel more full of the experiences I’ve had. Funny, that.


I mail the scrapbook and my maps to Norman and Jean, then go for an amble south of town. I follow a foot path that John had told me about, and end up by the Eden River. It burbles quietly. Lots of river rock, overhanging trees, a gray cow grazing at the near bank then splashing across and away. I find a stone stamped “NEW”—perhaps an old brick facing that went astray and got eroded to nearly nothing.


By the entrance to the stream is a large boulder with a poem carved on it in wavy letters that made them look windblown: “The sky’s harsh crystal/ Wind a blade, trees stripped,/ Grass dull with cold. Life/ Is a kernel hidden/ In the stone of winter.” No signature except a block carving of a man with a scythe in tall grass.

Walking alone instead of with others, I find I pay more attention to the surroundings in order not to get lost. I also remind myself more often to take in the view. Walking with others, I may take in the view, but quite often I slip into “passenger” mode, mind switched off, just going along unless I’m in front and playing pathfinder.

I begin reading Natalie Goldberg again (Writing Down the Bones) after planning my route for the next two days. I haven’t been able to send this book away to London to lighten my load. She writes like a friend, a guide, a crazy person who shows me that it’s okay to use writing as a way out, or through, or over, or in, whichever path I need to take at the moment.

Her essay “No Hindrances” has a construction-worker friend saying that if he “did the dead center of what he’s supposed to be doing, it would be writing, ‘but building’s easier.’”

I ask myself that question—what is the dead center of what I’m supposed to be doing?

The answer is very clear. Stop writing for others. Downsize more. Resist getting caught up in the swirl of stuff and bills again. Travel more. Get a small place for six months. Write. Write. Write.

Three chestnut Arabians are grazing in a sheep field that I pass on my way home. Two of them have three knee-high white socks, the other has four. I sit on the wall. Two come over to graze nearby. I leave a while later to go in search of supper, and remember the special block print my long-time friend Dean sent me last Christmas. He had dedicated it to me because of its subject—a canal-walking draft horse that had its own mind, and did its work in its own way, regardless of what anyone else wanted him to do or be. As Dean watched me sell my home, release my horse, downsize my possessions, and then set off on this trip, he saw me as someone who follows her own path like that horse, Mike. His faith in me is both a tribute and an inspiration as I look ahead and wonder what comes next.

Trail miles: 12; actual miles walked: 12.5, plus a few miles of rambling on the rest day.

C2C Day 7, Orton (Mile 71)—Shap Ahoy!

Today I am to reach the 70-mile mark of the walk. Over one-third of the way across England. It turns out to be a time of good and unexpected company.

I breakfast with Jenny and Len, then am off at nine to walk to Shap via Rosgill, using public footpaths that cross sheep and cow fields. I have only my OS map and the most basic of compass skills to guide me, and I manage the four-mile trip in 1.5 hours, with several pauses along the way to verify direction (including that, yes, I am to walk straight across someone’s back garden and under their knickers drying on the laundry line—look closely through the gap in that photo), and to hunt for stone stiles that are concealed like secret staircases along miles of stone walls that all look the same.

Thankfully, someone has spray-painted fluorescent yellow dots near each set of embedded steps—a C2C trail-marking color. Once I know to look for them, I feel more confident about bee-lining it through people’s pastures following a dashed line on the OS map.

One of the standard detours on the C2C to is go to Shap Abbey, a ruin dating back to 1199; had I come the traditional route through Shap, it would have been almost on the way. I’ve had my fill of abbeys and cathedrals on this trip, however, so I decide to skip the side trip and continue on to Shap itself.

Shap is the largest town I’ve come upon so far on the walk, busy with traffic on Main Street and folks out for Monday shopping. I am disappointed that the post office is only a post office, not also a general store, which I’ve gotten used to in the UK. So I go to the Shap co-op for incidentals, repack an overly stuffed daypack, and take a break for a fresh Snickers bar and writing under a tree at the side of a road. Everywhere I turn, there are fliers posted to protest a dozen wind turbines that are proposed nearby.

The town has a certain charm, but right now I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of time here. I’m on another day alone, and I’d rather be in the countryside on the walk. My feet are holding up well, although the little toe on my left foot feels very tender.

At 11:30, I check the library for Internet access. Arg. All the computers are being replaced right now; they may be ready by 1:00. My 50-50 chance of having e-mail access in Anytown, UK, continues to hold strong.

The librarian, a brown-eyed brunette, says, “You’re the second person in ten minutes to ask to use the Internet.”

I am hopeful. “Were the others a couple? Australian?”

“Why, yes.”

I laugh. It must be Elaine and John, who have been seeking out e-mail every other day on the trip, too.

“They just left,” she tells me. “They said they’d go out for lunch and come back in an hour. They might be in one of the pubs.”

I am about to begin a recon of the three pubs in town, but I spot John and Elaine setting up a picnic at the bowling green across the street. We all spread out on a bench next to the green, and then wave Jenny and Len over as they come down the road. They have just walked into Shap from the end of Haweswater Reservoir, where a cab had taken them this morning to rejoin where they’d left the trail yesterday. Our picnic grows to take over both benches and a good bit of pavement.

Tony, a friendly resident from Shap whom Elaine and John had met at the green just before I arrived, comes back to check on his new friends. He meets the whole group of us, and then goes off to encourage the library to get the Internet done for us out-of-towners before 1:00.

Elaine and John and I talk about the track from Bampton to Shap, and we laugh over the laundry line as part of the trail. I confess to being lost for a while looking for those camouflaged stiles.

We have a bush saying,” says Elaine: “‘You’re never lost, you’re just geographically embarrassed.’” She’s been geographically embarrassed a few times herself, what with many walks in Australia and elsewhere. “Whenever I don’t know where I’m going,” she says, “I just say, ‘I’m not lost; I know I’m somewhere. I’m right here!’” The sentiment is echoed by one of many charming Wendy the Sheep postcards I’ve seen at villages on the C2C path.

Tony comes back to report that the library is moving slowly on the Internet setup and isn’t likely to be done soon, so he invites us to come to his place after lunch to use his computer! I’m reluctant to go—I’m still feeling the desire to be back on the trail—and Elaine and John say, “Thanks, Tony, we will!” I give it some thought and decide to join them: travel is all about meeting people where they live, after all, and one doesn’t always get such a friendly invitation.

So after lunch, our new friend returns to lead us across the park to his house and introduces us to his wife, Joyce, and their small elderly dog, Smokey. Elaine and John take first crack at the computer upstairs, and I spend time with Joyce, Tony, and Smokey in the living room. I drink cold cranberry juice and we talk about my travels and the C2C walk and their history of living in the area. They are gracious listeners, avid conversationalists, and allow me to photograph them in their back garden. I am reminded of my spontaneous visit with Janet and Tricia in Bridestowe. What privileged, personal spaces to be invited into, living rooms and back gardens are.

John and Elaine come downstairs, I have my turn at the computer for e-mail, and we all spend another half hour visiting and sharing stories. We try to get John’s camera to take a timed photo of us from where he puts it on a shelf. It somehow repeatedly fails in this attempt, and we finally manage one with Elaine’s camera.

Refreshed, rested, and ready for the road, John, Elaine, and I take our leave of our Shap friends and head out together on the next eight or so miles to Orton/Raisbeck.




The terrain has changed from endless fells to much flatter land—walled fields, swelling hills, limestone quarries (used and disused), a few natural escarpments. We walk a pedestrian overpass above the M6 motorway with cars zipping by below us, and then across the path of old Roman roads long disintegrated into huge chunks of limestone. I see no brooks today, either—all is dry and hot.

At Crosby Ravensworth Fell, the grassy fields give way to a startling expanse of heath and sparse grassland. The area is so flat and featureless that mapped descriptions of “tree” and “boulder”—landmarks I had laughed at reading—stand out as beacons a mile away. A warning posted at the outskirts of the fell warns of adders, but the only snake-like creature we find is a fascinating green caterpillar barely two inches long. Not that I’m complaining about this lack of poisonous fauna, mind you.

I am overjoyed when we reach Orton at last. My heels, feet, and ankles are sore and my legs are tired. We get to John and Elaine’s B&B first—a first-class place where chocolates are on the pillows and freshly baked scones await the guests. Jenny and Len are staying there too, and have arrived before we do.

I find out that my B&B is more than a mile out of town along the Orton/Raisbeck road. I’m grumpy about this, not only because I feel more like collapsing than walking another twenty minutes, but also because it means another walk back and forth to town for dinner. The place I’m staying tonight doesn’t offer evening meals.

The one saving grace of the trip to the B&B up the hill is that I recognize the two men coming down it. Michael and David, all smiles, freshly showered, and wearing trousers and shirts instead of hiking shorts and backpacks, are on their way back to town. They’re camping at the same B&B where I’m staying. We greet each other heartily.

“Did you get our note at The Knott yesterday?” Michael asks me.

“Oh, no, I didn’t! I decided to not go up there. You left me a note? What did it say?”

“I don’t remember, really. Something like ‘Audrey—good job reaching The Knott. Enjoy the trip down. Michael and David. P.S. Take this note with you so we won’t be littering.’”

We laugh over the thought of the note being found by others who might wonder who these three people were and whether the lady named Audrey ever made it to The Knott. They head off for dinner, and I keep trudging uphill to the B&B.

When I finally make it there, I am hot and sweaty, especially now that I’ve stopped walking. The plump, elderly landlady is brusque, ushering me into a glassed-in, add-on patio that houses a dining table and some plants. She points to where I’m to leave my boots and trekking poles by the knee-high stone wall and offers me tea. I automatically say yes and am given a mug of brew so hot that a fresh supply of sweat floods from my pores just to be near it.

She and her husband sit with me in silence in the breezeless room—she at the other end of the table, watching me try to sip the scalding tea, him filling a chair in a corner, cane in hand, watching me dab my sweaty arms, face, and neck with my kerchief.

I don’t have a lot of energy left for talk. I am praying for the ability to drink the tea quickly, or for them to quit staring and leave me to myself, but the tea is too hot, and their definition of hospitality is apparently to stay present and attentive to a guest’s every move.

The man speaks from his corner. Loudly. “What are you doing that for?”

I don’t understand the question. “Doing what?”

“Rubbing yourself with that cloth. What are you doing that for?”

Before I can answer, his wife shoots out, “She’s hot! She’s wiping off the sweat.”

He speaks again. Loudly. “Why is she so hot? It’s not hot in here.”

“She just walked in from town.”

“She shouldn’t be hot walking in from town. That’s not far.”

I’m feeling defensive and cranky and irritated at being discussed as if I weren’t there. “It’s far when you start at Shap. That’s why I’m hot. I just walked ten miles from Shap.”

“Shap’s not that far away,” says he. “It’s only eight miles.”

Technically, he’s right, but I squelch the impulse to argue that it’s nearly ten miles from Shap to his house, or to point out how far I’ve traveled door to door today. I give it up to concentrate on blowing the tea to a cool enough temperature to drink.

More silence ensues.

My arms keep sticking to the vinyl tablecloth. When I peel them off, they sound like Velcro being ripped open in a cathedral during prayer.

“What time do you want breakfast?” The question is barked by the lady.

I’ve learned to prefer a 7:30 breakfast on the walk, but not every B&B starts that early; some downright refuse to. “What time do you usually serve it?”

“Doesn’t matter. I can do it at 6:00 if you want. But I have 12 guests tonight, and I feed everyone at once. You’re the first one I’m asking, and whatever time you say it is, everyone else will have it then, too. What time do you want breakfast?”

“Uh.” I stall for time. Sheesh. What’s a reasonable hour to set for a dozen strangers to all eat breakfast? “7:30?”

“OK. 7:30. I’ll tell everyone that’s what you decided. Meet down here. You done with your tea?”
I look down. I’ve managed to drain it by an eighth. “Yes, I am, thanks.”

“Good. Your bedroom’s upstairs. There’s a tub in the bathroom down the hall. If you prefer a shower, that’s outside. Do you prefer a bath or shower?”

I need to go outside to use a shower? “Oh, a bath is fine, thanks.”

She leads me to my room, and leaves me blissfully alone. I head immediately for a bath. The bathroom is carpeted (common here). It’s the only bath available for the upstairs, which means that the woman and her husband use it too, and I feel like one of the family as I set out my toiletries among theirs.

After a change of clothes and a brief rest, I walk back to Orton to have dinner with all the Aussies at The George pub. All our meals come at once but mine...they’ve forgotten to place the order. I finally receive it and it’s such a nondescript meal that I can’t even remember what I had by the time I get back to my room.

On the way home I feed handfuls of knee-high grass over the fence to a black Fell pony and watch the sun set over hills toward Shap. I send a silent thanks and good night to my new friends Tony and Joyce in Shap, as well as to my six fellow C2C’ers spending the night here in Orton/Raisbeck.

It’s been seven days of walking, and twelve more days to go before I soak my feet in Robin Hood’s Bay. I am hoping the way gets easier from now on.

Trail miles: 10.5; actual miles walked: 15.5

C2C Day 6, Bampton Grange (≈Mile 61)—Getting Lost Is More Fun with Friends

Last night I have the best sleep I’ve had this week, with lights out by 10:00p, and I wake refreshed. The clouds look low, and over breakfast I decide to avoid the hilltops and take Beverley’s route south via Hartsop and Hayes Water to reach The Knott. She points me to the path that starts in the field across from her farm; getting there requires a dog-leg down the road and across the main street.

I start out around 9:30 and try to hurry, but am not getting my woolen toe cushions just right. They’re either too thick and jamming my toes or too thin and not giving me enough support. After the third stop within 300 yards to adjust them, I realize I’m hurrying because I feel scared about the route today.

I’m not going at all on the bona fide C2C, but taking a valley route to Bampton Grange that parallels the ridge walk of the C2C, follows the C2C path between The Knott and Kidsty Pike, and then veers off to follow the Roman Road “High Street” before going gradually down Bampton Common. It altogether avoids the Haweswater Reservoir, which Beverley says is miles of stony walking like at Ennerdale. Much of today’s walk and landmarks aren’t even in Wainwright’s book.

Looking back on Patterdale, I decide on a different route to Hayes Water even from the one Beverley suggested. It sends me through a lovely wild grotto with lots of singing birds that I record on Perry. An amazing gnarled filbert tree looks very old but is still bearing fruit on a few branches. Brothers Water shows up right on cue as a languid landmark.

Still following the details of my OS map, I get off track at Hartsop itself. The obvious footpath along a stone wall that I’m tracking peters out into a soggy cow path and dead-ends at another stone wall that has no stile. I can see my goal down the hill and its corresponding wiggly line on the map—the beck and gill beyond Hartsop—but I am way too high above it in reality.

OK. OS map rule #1: a 25000 scale really means that things are closer than they appear. I should be almost hugging the river, not this far above it. I resolve to attend to the map’s little stone-wall and fence lines more closely and turn to backtrack along the muddy cow path. A high-pitched cry comes from the sky—a golden eagle is soaring over the pasture I am in. She is heading me straight out like a beacon. I recall reading that golden eagles are returning to this area but stay in hidden places. I rejoice in her freedom and beauty, and in the chance to experience a sighting of this usually reclusive bird. I would never have enjoyed her flight had I not gotten off track.

Once again, the day is hot. A stop along Hayeswater Gill gives me a chance to rest from a steady uphill climb and soak my kerchief in the widest stream I’ve seen since starting the walk. Wide expanses of dry rock shows that this gill is still much narrower than it would be in wetter summers, though.

Getting to Hayeswater shortly afterward, I face what Elaine calls a “grunt” climb—easy for footing, but at a 35 to 40 percent grade that leaves me huffing and puffing and taking frequent breaks the whole way up. I finally reach the top to find seven cyclists resting and drinking water next to their laid-out bikes.

“My god,” I say, panting. “Don’t tell me you carried those up here.”

“Yeah,” they chorus, laughing at my expression.

I shake my head. “That’s like carrying your horse up a hill to ride it!”

They are headed to the High Street to bike all the way down along the ridge. Before I leave, another three climbers come over the crest shouldering bicycles. Loony. That’s what they are. Bloomin’ loony.

Beverley had told me that, after I pass The Knott, to watch carefully for the trail that turns sharply left so I don’t miss the turnoff to Kidsty Pike. “Follow the rock wall on your right. If you get to the big opening, you’ve gone too far. Look over your left shoulder, and you’ll see where you missed the turnoff. If you miss it, you’ll end up walking for hours south on the High Street and end up back where you started in Patterdale.”

Great. Don’t want to do that.

I decide to forego a visit to the knoll of The Knott itself and dutifully keep an eye on the rock wall, looking for the opening she describes. Only there are lots of openings. Fallen openings. Crumbling openings. Some deliberate-looking openings. And no corresponding path over my left shoulder. I begin to wish I’d mastered the trick of counting steps so I can gauge actual distance against a map when I spot another one of those bikers who has stopped to consult with a walker. They’re at the junction of a very wide gravel path that turns sharply left...rather hard to miss, actually.

“This the path to Kidsty Pike?”

“Uh, looks like it, yes,” they say, turning their own map around.

I let out a whoop and head up hill. Another tricky bit taken care of by available resources and support. Having canceled the idea of going to Kidsty Pike itself, I am just crossing a trackless field of heather and grass called Rampsgill Head when I catch long-distance sight of a couple wearing familiar-looking beige shorts, shirts, and outback hats.

The woman yells, “Audrey?”

I yell, “Elaine?”

Wow, what a delight to see familiar faces after a schlep like this morning’s. I’d given up hope of meeting any of my new chums today since I’d taken a different route from Patterdale. Heaven only knows where Michael and David are by now; they usually leave earlier than I do, anyway.

Elaine and John have already had a lunch break, and we discuss path options ahead. I relay what Beverley had said about Haweswater Reservoir, and none of us want to do the Kidsty scramble down. So we opt to follow my OS map and take the Roman Road down Bampton Common.

I pull out my sack lunch to eat en route, and we talk about our travels. “How was Striding Edge?” I am still happy I didn’t take that trail yesterday, and amazed that they had.

“Terrifying,” says Elaine. “Exposure on both sides, and some spots of real hard rock climbing. I’m glad I did it, and I don’t need to do it again.”

I heartily congratulate her success, for I know she has conquered a big fear. (Ask her about the time she crawled on hands and knees over boulders in Australia while her children skipped around her like gazelles, and you’ll understand the magnitude of yesterday’s accomplishment.)

John has done a lot of rock climbing in his time, some of it extreme, and agrees that Striding Edge is right up there in complexity and difficulty. He was particularly worried when he inadvertently dislodged a rock and sent it careening down the slope toward some hikers who had no business scrabbling up a particularly extreme side of the hill. “Look out below!” he cried. Fortunately, the stone bounced away from the climbers. John still looks relieved when he tells the story.

The Roman Road is less road now than a flat expanse of moors, and it’s blessedly gentle to walk on after so many days of stony ground and granite climbs. The path flows downhill, the hills are swells that expose peekaboo views of the lakes this district is named for, and instead of stones to jar every joint, padded peat cushions my steps.

The path is easy to follow until we get to Bampton Common itself, at the end of the Haweswater Reservoir. Then it becomes a fun challenge to find our way among the undulating hills and multiple paths that appear and disappear in the grasses. A landmark called Four Stones Hill proves most elusive—it’s supposedly four standing stones on a hill near the reservoir, but they’re nowhere to be seen.

We laugh a lot here, and I realize it’s far more fun to be lost with others than to be lost alone. We have plenty of daylight and three brains to put to the problem. We press on with John’s compass, our two maps, and everyone’s best common sense, and the trail still leaves us hanging at the outskirts of the first farmhouse we’ve seen all day. There we find a mound with four boulders all in a line—quite possibly the Four Stones Hill moved much farther north.

Civilization in the form of Bampton shows in the distance at last. On the very last slope of the very last sheep field before we reach Bampton’s road, I am reading my map and I step straight into a rabbit hole. Boom, down I go, face-plant into the grass before I even know what’s happened. Thank god I didn’t twist my ankle or knee, but my already-sore toes got jammed forward in my boot. Yeeowch.

OK. OS map rule #2: Don’t walk and read the map at the same time...


My hotel is at Bampton Grange, about 1/2 mile farther down the road from John and Elaine’s in Bampton, but that much closer to eventually reconnecting with the C2C trail around Shap. I take a welcome toilet stop at John & Elaine’s B&B (the proprietress panicks a bit when she sees three of us waiting on her doorstep, and had planned for only two). We reconnoiter with maps for tomorrow’s leg of the journey, and I am soon on my way to a shower, dry clothes, and an orange-passion fruit J2O at my hotel, the Crown & Mitre.

At the onsite pub, a five-year-old blonde girl in a pink headscarf is holding out a white plastic grocery bag to each patron: “Pea?”

Her big blue eyes are wide as she offers me her goods. I peer inside. A pile of sugar snap peas. I take one with thanks, and off she goes.

I eat supper at the pub with Jenny and Len, C2C’ers who are also from Australia, selecting a dish of venison in red wine/cranberry sauce, chips, broccoli, peppered cabbage, and carrots. Elaine and John, who met their fellow Aussies at Stonethwaite, join us for dessert. I order sticky lemon pudding with vanilla ice cream, but it’s not as good as regular sticky toffee pudding.

Turns out that John/Elaine and Jenny/Len live on opposite sides of Melbourne: John/Elaine on the coast, and Jenny/Len on the wine country side, 55 miles away. They’ve never met until this walk, even though they’re all avid walkers in Australia. They swap tales of the many hikes and walking tours they’ve done there, and I mentally move that country to the top of my list of places to visit someday.

By rough calculations and map checks, had I walked toward Shap instead of Bampton Grange, I would be at mile 61 of the official trail today. I’ve got four miles or so to walk to Shap tomorrow, which returns me to the trail at mile 61.5 and on the way to tomorrow’s nightly stop, Orton/Raisbeck.

Trail miles: 13; actual miles walked: 15