C2C Day 18, Littlebeck (Mile 179)—Harry Potter & The Vanishing Cairns

I’m two days and 19 or so miles away from finishing the walk, and my trail has slowed down instead of sped up. I like this. I overnight in Littlebeck today, where several of my walking friends will have also stayed ahead of me.

I leave Ashley House at 9:20a and walk the few miles to Grosmont (Grow Mont) with another guest at Ashley House who’s been walking the full C2C. He is friendly walking company, but I quickly find that it’s best not to be downwind of him. He says he’s been waiting until the end of the C2C to wash his hiking clothes, and the lack of a laundering after nearly two weeks is beginning to tell.


It’s only 4.5 miles to Grosmont on a trail that’s mostly asphalt or gravel farm road after a brief stint through a leafy forest. We pass Beggar’s Bridge just outside of Glaisdale (some romantic story is attached to that, but I didn’t absorb the full gist of it from Margaret), and we move at a good clip to arrive at Grosmont in a little over an hour. The path takes us along the Esk River, which can flood to 6 feet or higher at the ford spots, and has the standing markers and flood-ready footbridge to prove it. Astonishing.


Part of the trail was a toll road in 1940s, with a cost of 4 shillings for a horse and two-wheeled cart, 8 shillings if the cart had four wheels, and 1 pound for motor cars and motor sidecars. A hearse was 6 shillings. We pause at the Toll House, but, alas, no warm chocolate chip cookies are waiting.

My cohort goes on to Robin Hood’s Bay today, so we exchange goodbyes here in Grosmont. I’m taking a stopover for a train ride, before moving on to Littlebeck. I wave hello to the two women from the New Zealander Pack ’n’ Boots club across the street.

“Where you off to today?” I holler.

“Robin Hood’s Bay all the way!”

“Where are the others?” I notice the men are absent.

“Where else?” She points into the grocery. “Getting more food for the walk!”


I wish them luck then buy a ticket for the 10:45 scenic roundtrip train ride to Pickering (the end of the line, a little over an hour away) on an old diesel train that’s reminiscent of the Hogwarts Express. I can sit anywhere I like, and choose a carriage that has compartments with red cushioned seats and a narrow aisle to walk along one side of the train, a la Harry Potter. Steam trains make the same Grosmont/Pickering run more often during the day; I’m sad I missed one of those, as this one smells of diesel and lacks the full HP ambiance.



Several adults join me in the compartment and comment on its being like the one in Harry Potter. One of the women giggles, “Maybe we should dress up like the Dementors and scare the children in the next compartment.”

I like these people.

Alas, they and the children they’re accompanying in the next compartment are all required to be in another part of the train because of their selected stop. The conductor moves them along, and I’m left alone in this traveling parlor room.

The train pulls into Goathland, its first stop, and to my surprise the platform is a shuffling mass of black cloaks and pointed black hats. Scores of children and teenagers, all dressed as HP look-alikes, have packed onto the platform for the next arrival. I hope they’ll join this train, but as we slow down, the whole body of black begins to stir confusedly, and within moments they are pouring along the platform and going and up and over the overpass to reach the northbound platform, where a steam train like the Hogwarts Express is slowing down toward us beneath plumes of white vapor.

Turns out that the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the 18-mile renovated line I’m riding now, was actually used in the first HP movie—in particular, the Goathland and Pickering stations I’m visiting! Both the stations and the trains are meccas for HP fans, and this bit of track through the North Riding Forest has become as popular as the train through Glenfinnian, another HP movie site up north. Like so many other enterprises, the railroad aficionados of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Society (www.nymr.demon.co.uk) who revived this defunct steam line and converted it into a living museum are undoubtedly indebted to Rowling for sparking the renewed interest that keeps their darling trains going.




As well as being famous as a movie set, these old-fashioned locomotives are also the kind of trains that prompt people like me to stick their head out the windows like dogs in a car—because we can.

Watching the carriages wind around the bends in the track, seeing flag signals go up and down, gliding through tree-lined valleys—it’s easy to imagine myself on a miniature Lionel train set, humming down the tracks through elaborate manmade topographies like those at the Hobby Hall of the Puyallup Fair.

Me, a tiny person in a tiny train passing through carefully landscaped plywood-bottomed tableaus, past wooden to-scale homes and village stores and blacksmiths shops, over hills and through tunnels made of chicken wire and paper maché, directed by invisible hands that have laid out track and set up electrical switches and flags that tell us when to slow, when to advance, when to switch tracks to avoid an oncoming train.

Only here, at the North Riding Forest, we ride on carved through gloriously green hillsides, past an occasional fen bog, and through a few stops at mostly nondescript stations, save for the colorful bridgework and decor at Pickering and Goathland.

The ride gives me time to sit and think. I’m feeling both sad and happy about my itinerary for this walk, about taking an extra day to get to Robin Hood’s Bay. Sad that I’m not there to celebrate it with my friends (I haven’t met anyone yet who’s also ending on Saturday) and glad that I’ve created my own experience for the journey.

Being able to take my time near the end has removed the driving aspect of the walk—I’ll get there when I get there—and I have the time to enjoy the journey the way I choose to. Rather than make for a final push to Robin Hood’s Bay, I’m entering at my leisure, as part of traveling across England by foot, instead of making “doing the Coast to Coast” a goal in itself.

Early on, I decided to stop saying that I’m “doing” the C2C, and “doing” York, and that I “did” the Isle of Wight. Those phrases carry a kind of chore-ness about them—I did the dishes—and imply that I saw it all, experienced it all, have nothing to return to. Even lingering in a small area for several days at a time often wasn’t enough to “do” it, to take it all in. Having this more relaxed, three-month itinerary has helped, though. I feel as if I’ve lived in England for three months, instead of just traveled and toured through here.

It takes living in a place for four seasons to really feel its rhythms. I wonder what place I should go to next to do that.


The skies right now are turning grayer, and temps cooler. The train has taken me almost twenty miles south of the trail and left behind blue skies and gentle sunshine. At the end of the line, I pick up a pasty-and-crisps lunch at Pickering station and then hop back onto the train for the reverse trip to Grosmont. I move down the train to check out the other carriages; one is a dining car and another full of red velour bench seats, but the others that are far less interesting than the HP-like compartment.




The train ride has been a fun diversion (albeit nap-inducing on the way back), and when I disembark at Grosmont I eagerly return to the C2C trail at a huff-n-puffing 33% incline for the first mile out of town. The climb is a grunt, but it affords a lovely backward view of the village. Following the trail leads me to a disturbing moor, Black Brow, that, rather than expanses of heather, is covered with clumps of spongy, chopped-up moss. It’s like walking on a field of crumble topping.

From here I can see the infamous coastal town of Whitby off my left shoulder, and I get my first glimpse of this whole endeavor’s objective: the North Sea. It is the first sighting of water that isn’t flowing down a river bed, trickling down a beck, or pouring out of the sky in over two weeks.

And once again I get lost.

First I follow the trail over Black Brow, just as it says on the OS map. The trail peters out, so I begin to follow a spotty series of low-lying cairns—sure signs that at least I’m following a blessed path. Then I run out of cairns, too. I see two more cairns in the distance, but up close they turn out to be sheep.

I pause. OK. So no trail. No markers. But I am still facing the right direction, more or less.

I doggedly keep my heading due east toward the A road that I know is ahead, all the while looking around for access to a path that’s supposed to go a bit more southeasterly, per the map.

By now the spongy bits of ground have turned to deep heather and I am stumbling along a vague trail that, I realize too late, is actually a channel made by water runoff. Right after I say aloud, “OK, angels, I could use another trail marker now,” I look up from watching my footing and see a trekker just off to my right—in the perfect southeasterly direction.

“Aha!” I wave his way and yell. He stops and I yell again. “You must be on that trail I’ve missed!”

He waits as I tack over thick heather toward him. Local walking etiquette encourages walkers to stay on the trails, as wanton trekking every which way, especially the sensitive moor areas like this, can quickly deteriorate them. However, given the choice between tramping across 50 yards of moors to get to the trail, vs. stalking another 400 yards through even thicker stuff to reach the road, I elect the shorter route and lift my legs high to march through heather that’s so thick my feet never reach the soil where I tread. The plants are soft and yielding, like walking over mounds of stiff foam pillows.

The walker is a tall man, easily in his 70s. He has a small pack and a walking stick, wears trousers and jacket and cap. He has taken a bus and “walked over here from somewhere over there,” pointing vaguely toward my destination of Littlebeck across the A road. He is heading to Grosmont where he’ll catch a ride home, preferring this plan to the alternative of driving to a car park and walking. “When did you start your walk?” he asks.

“July 17.”

“About 18 days. I walked it twenty years ago in 10 days, maybe 12. I did two walks then, Pennine and the Coastal. Can’t remember which one took me 10 and which took me 12.”

I hear that the Pennine is usually 18 days at a pushing pace, so this fellow must have been really moving. And certainly to do a 20-mile day at the beginning of the C2C is to turn it into an ordeal. I can still feel twinges of pain in my knees when a downhill path gets really steep—those Lake District fells were rugged, even with trekking poles.

He gives me guidance on the track ahead: “You’ll cross the road, then follow that valley somewhere over there, lots of twists and turns along the river.”

Not very specific, and because I’m heading for a farm outside of Littlebeck tonight, his directions aren’t true to my path, so I ignore them once I cross the highway.

Littlebeck Intake Farm is easily spotted in the distance, and I follow a gentle downhill detour to approach the farm from the back, instead of the usual alternative that would have meant going uphill to reach it from the front. (This is one of the few tips I recorded from the little research I did for this walk.)

These OS-marked footpaths not only take me directly around and in front of the gardens at the neighboring High Quebec farm, but also between the buildings of Low Quebec Farm and through its back garden, right between their swing sets in the trees and their polytunnel. In the center of the garden stands a two-way finger post to direct the many walkers who undoubtedly pass through here. I still marvel at the freedom this public access thing throughout the UK. In America, “No Trespassing” signs would be posted at every possible ingress.

I arrive at Intake Farm around three. Owner Robert and a collie, Ben, meet me in the farm yard; his wife, Judith, comes in from feeding the hens and we talk as she feeds me tea and homemade cake in her kitchen, clearing magazines, mail, and papers from the crowded table as if I were an old friend dropping by for a visit.

Intake Farm is one of two B&Bs in Littlebeck, but it’s really the only one worth going to, and almost everyone on the C2C who makes Littlebeck their last stop passes through Intake Farm.

Several of my fellow travelers have stayed at her place since Tuesday. I’m the only guest tonight, Friday, for which she is grateful; last night she had nine, including those who camped in the fields. She prepares rooms, feeds dinner, and feeds breakfast to six to eight people every night for a week—even more when the weather turns wet and campers come in for a cot and hot tea.

Michael and David had come on Tuesday. As I sit outside with Judith in the sun, the Sherpa Van man arrives with my bag—today is the only day on the walk that I actually beat my luggage to my destination. The Sherpa fellow says that he had met David and Michael two days ago at Robin Hood’s Bay to take them back to Richmond, where they had left their car at the beginning of the walk. They had arrived at RHB in the pouring rain, met the van, and had changed clothes in the back of van, singing the whole time, so pleased they were to be done.

John and Elaine had arrived at Littlebeck that same day, sopping wet from having walked 20 miles from Blakey Howe, most of the time in the rain. Andy, Jenny, Len, Marja, and Nico were all here last night. Each day, Judith’s visitors had told her about this American woman, Audrey, who is traveling alone and would be staying with her. They all said, “You’ll like her!” and Judith and I have a great laugh over this reputation that has preceded me.

The only C2C companion I haven’t heard about, then, is Marv, and I think he’s a day ahead of me, probably pulling into Robin Hood’s Bay today.

I shower, rub balm into my feet, set out my laundry for washing, then play with a few of the farm’s many cats—Adolf (shown here), Lil, Bill, and Jill—and use their broadband (yay, fast!) Internet for a couple of hours of e-mail. I am arranging for Patti to pick me up at the airport on Tues evening, when I get home on Aug 15. I’m glad to know I’ll have a friend waiting for me.


With my warmest socks in the wash, Judith supplies me with house slippers to keep my toes toasty as the evening turns a little chilly. I select the purple fuzzy ones with ladybirds and sit down to a yummy dinner of shrimp cocktail starter in a homemade “rose marie” sauce (cream, mayo, tomato juice, lemon juice, Worcester sauce); chicken casserole, new potatoes boiled in mint, cabbage steamed over the potatoes, and cauliflower au grain. Dessert is fresh fruit in fresh cream with ginger-lemon herbal (with H pronounced) tea.

Well fed, relaxed, and ready for bed, I am feeling content and just a little sad. Tomorrow: the last 12 miles to Robin Hood’s Bay and the waters of the North Sea.

Trail miles: 7.5; actual miles walked: 8

C2C Day 17, Glaisdale (Mile 170.5)—Easing Toward the End

I wake up to more wind and rain, although it’s definitely lighter in intensity and color. Forecasts are for no rain today, and the storm was to have broken at three o’clock last night. It was very stormy indeed last night, though no lightning and thunder—just winds groaning around the walls and rain beating against the windows.

Today looks to be another easy flat walk across the tops of moors. It should also be a fast day, as it’s one of the shortest on my itinerary. If I get to Glaisdale early enough, I might take a bus or train to Whitby, which nearly every Brit (and I mean nearly every Brit) I’ve met on the walk says to go to. Gee, playing tourist on the walk. What a concept.



Breakfast this morning includes an official menu to review, and a table that’s already laden with homemade mixed fruit preserves, fat and skinny milk (cleverly presented in fat and skinny jugs), butter and Flora (also on white plates/clear plates for easy distinction). “Sycamore Jack” takes menu orders, and every meal cooked to request...a right fine restaurant service we have. By far this couple has the most fun I’ve seen doing this B&B service in all my time and trips to England.

After taking a photo of Brian, me, Jack, and Andy on the stoop, Mary drops us all off at our starting points on the trail for the day—Brian at The Lion Inn and Andy and me 45 minutes down the trail at Fat Betty. The mists are thick at this point, but we can still see ahead well on the trail. I am glad for Andy’s company through this part of the moors.




The trail is mostly hilltop walking through cloud that lifts steadily as we move east. There’s little elevation change, with some ungroomed foot trails and mostly road or improved trails like yesterday. We get some lovely views down the Great Fryup Head (really, that’s what it’s called) and Glaisdale Moor, and we send several coveys of grouse into flight from the heather. Heavy wind pushes us from the side; it is cold, but brings no rain. The eight and half miles go fast in conversation that range from work and travel to personal goals and growth.


Outside of Glaisdale, we meet a local named Jim on the trail. He is the quintessential Yorkshireman—long coat, Wellingtons, wool cap. He seems a bit taken aback at my effusive greeting, but willingly gives us directions through Glaisdale to the pub for lunch. He also warns us to be on the lookout for the results of scarecrow competition. We spot an entry immediately past a farm gate—a huge bumble bee made from a silage capsule.

Andy and I lunch at Arncliffe Arms pub, and we are joined by Brian an hour later. This place has the best menu I’ve seen in a pub, with creative, cosmopolitan recipes that assure me that they know how to cook here. I order the chicken tortilla wrap with garlic, olive oil, and spring onion.

Both Brian and Andy continue on from Glaisdale today, and I stay here for the night. We say farewells and I head for Ashley House, just a few blocks from the pub. The views from their yard are spectacular—right over the valley of River Esk.

While talking with proprietors Margaret and John, I learn that Tracy, the gal I’d met on Day 1 over breakfast at St Bees, had stayed with them a few days ago, as had Wessel and David, the Holland boys whom I’d met at Lining Crag on the way to Grasmere. And I just got a text message from Elaine and John—they’ve landed in Robin Hood’s Bay, 3:40p. Hurrah!

It’s so good to hear about the folks I’ve met on the way, especially those I passed time with early on and never saw again. I wonder how Marv, Michael and David, and the Pack ’n’ Boots crew, are progressing. Michael and David should be done by now, come to think of it. They would have pulled into Robin Hood’s Bay yesterday, in all that rain. Andy, Jenny and Len, and Nico and Marja, are finishing tomorrow, I think.

Ashley House has two bathrooms for guests, and one has a huge tub that lets me luxuriate in a hot bubble bath—the first I’ve had in years because my House of Whimsor had only showers and a hot tub. I lie back beneath mountains of bubbles, and my muscles slowly give in to the hot water. Soon I am so relaxed that only my breathing moves the water in a regular slow tide in the tub. Up down. Up down. I hold my breath, expecting the water to still. But it keeps rising and falling in subtle wavelets between my breasts, pulsing to the rhythm of my heartbeat. Wow. My heart has become strong enough to move the water around me. I am proud of how my heart has strengthened over the past two weeks, how resilient it has been the past two-plus months—indeed all my life.

I’m glad I am taking my time on this last part of the journey, and have been wondering at my decision to stay overnight at Glaisdale. What am I to experience by taking an extra day the way I have, instead of pushing on yesterday to Glaisdale, or moving on today to reach Littlebeck, both of which would have been workable options? Well, first there’s been meeting Jack and Mary and Andy and Brian at Danby. And I got out of yesterday’s storm early. And I had a chance to walk with Andy to Glaisdale instead of legging it by myself today.

Tomorrow is another short day, which gives me the option of taking the steam train from Grosmont to Pickering. That’s an easy break along the way to Littlebeck. (I have decided not to take the train to Whitby, as that would spoil the experience of seeing the North Sea for the first time along the walk.) Slowing down is good.

I’m thinking I’d like to continue this point-to-point walking. Get a good medium-size backpack, B&B directory, and maps, and head out in other parts of the UK or in the US. A walk from London to Bath, East Sussex to Cornwall, across or around Wight. Or from Tacoma, Washington, to Vancouver, BC, say, on a trek that crosses local islands for overnights.

At moments like these, soaking in a hot bubble bath, anything is possible.

Trail miles: 8.5; actual miles walked: 9

C2C Day 16, White Cross (Mile 162.5)—This Is the England I Expected

The things we remember define who we are” says the BBC Breakfast show this morning as I check the weather report. That’s a theme that’s been running through me lately. What do I remember? What am I paying attention to? How do I define who I am next, based on what I choose to remember about who I’ve been before? What will I remember of this trip, once it’s over?

A quote from the Audrey Hepburn book I bought in Bath: “Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book and remembering—because you can’t take it in all at once.”

One thing I’ll remember about today is that it’s the England I expected—and that I’m glad I didn’t always get it.

Rain and wind pelted against the windows all last night at Shepherd’s Close Farm. This morning it is still wet, gray, windy, although the rains have stopped. I break out my base layer for the first time on the trip and attach my waterproofs to my daypack. Heavy rain is on its way by eleven, says the BBC.

I leave at nine thirty, much later than I’d planned, after standing in the wee kitchen of the lodge talking to Chris for nearly an hour.


The walking, fortunately, is very easy: the path is a converted disused railway track most of the way. It’s a wide, level road, with sandy footing or gravel that’s so compacted it rivals asphalt.



The signage is meager, but the trail doesn’t need much anyway except at Bloworth Crossing, at mile 155, where the Cleveland Way and the C2C walk split. Much of today’s trail is still on the Lyke Wake Walk, too. Standing stones, some tall, some squat, act as occasional waymarkers.

And what d’you know: the BBC was right. By eleven o’clock, the overcast skies, which have been spitting all morning, dissolve to slashing rain, and I’m soon wearing every piece of warmth and wet-weather gear I’ve brought, including waterproof trousers that are designed to go on without taking off my hiking boots (nifty feature, that). I try to protect my daypack with a raincover that’s sized for my much larger rucksack, but it can’t keep water from going between the pack and my back. Soon much of the pack is too wet to open without sagging, but most of the stuff inside stays dry enough.


I forge ahead, the wind most often at my back, and feel disappointed at the decreased visibility as the storm moves in. I sometimes have no idea where the horizon is in relation to this moor in any direction.

A half hour into the rain, I meet up with the first group of people I’ve seen heading west on the C2C. They are leaning straight into the weather. They say that The Lion Inn, ahead at Blakey Howe, is worth the walk for the food—and that the place serves meals from noon to ten. That’s the first pub I’ve heard of that doesn’t shut down food service shortly after lunch. The anticipation of a hot meal keeps me going for the next two hours.

Through a wet curtain of gray, a thin rake of a man, tall, dressed in black, wearing a pack, makes steady way toward me like some specter emerging from the Other Side. This unearthly impression is clinched by his almost skeletal build. He is drenched to the skin, and his rain-soaked jacket and slacks stick to him like the membrane of bat’s wings. He is grinning broadly, a madman who’s perfectly aware of his madness.

“Don’t need to bother putting on the rain slicker now!” He cackles at me through the wet. “The weathermen predicted 25 mm of rain, and here it is! Wonderful, isn’t it?”

Uh, yeah, right.

A short time later, another group trudges toward me. Their enormous packs are lumpy bags on their backs, each raincover a block of solid color. Bright blue, electric orange, red. Eight of them form a clump with a tail, like a human comet straggling across the moors. They are head-down to the weather. I hear the five in front singing a hymn as they pass.

I reach The Lion Inn and Blakey Howe at one o’clock. It has taken me 3.5 hours to cover a little over nine miles door to door, including a snack stop and pee breaks. (The latter involves an exasperating process of first finding a semblance of privacy amid mostly flat, open lands, and then laboriously furling four layers of sopping, intractable clothing to expose an unprotected bum to the pouring rain and prickly heather—oh, to be a man at these times!)

I drip my way into the stone-lined foyer of The Lion Inn and peel off my wet gear before going into the pub. I pad around the carpeted inn in my socks, finding first a toilet, then a table, then a meal to order. I’m damp to the skin, and am not convinced the raingear is working against this sodden mess today.

I have just dived into a very tomatoey tomato soup when the New Zealand Pack ’n’ Boots walkers arrive, also soaking wet. They’re overnight here, lucky them. I have about four more miles to go today, two of which are off trail to get to my B&B, Sycamore House, on a farm road to Danby. I’m to look for a standing granite marker known as “Fat Betty” at White Cross for the right track to take to their home.

I overhear someone saying the weather’s supposed to get worse at five today; it’s about two o’clock now; I plan to be at the B&B long before then. I wonder how John and Elaine are faring in the storm. They were to have left The Lion Inn today for Littlebeck—a very long 20 miles away in this weather.

Full of a hot lunch, I climb back into my clinging wet clothes and call to verify directions to Sycamore House. Bless her, Mary offers to pick me up at Fat Betty, halving the reminder of my trip today.

Bundled up again and heading into buckets of rain, I walk down the road and across a stretch of moors on a true footpath. There are no paving stones, no brought-in gravel, no converted railroads here. Just the peaty moor ground, uneven and winding, like the trail I walked to Keld.

Only right now I am walking directly into the weather. Cold rain pelts my cheeks like needles, water runs down my face and drips off my nose. My oversized pack cover flaps around my packed poles like a flag in a storm. I turn my head to spit and the winds send it sideways—whooosh—right away from me. Gloved hands stuffed into pockets, I hunker against the wind and squelch gamely down trails that are rivulets of water, up and around and over heath clumps, raising my head only often enough to locate the next tall stone marker so I can stay on track. I wring water out of the neckerchief that hangs from my pack.


I make it to White Cross/Fat Betty before Mary arrives, and prop myself against a signpost with my back to the wind, feeling very much like a Fell horse withstanding a storm. I didn’t even notice my feet and toes at all today.

Mary collects me within five minutes, and we turn right around to go back to The Lion Inn to pick up Andy, another traveler caught by the storm. I like Andy instantly as we shake hands in the car, front seat (me) to backseat (him), in greeting. He’s finishing off the last bit of the C2C walk that he hasn’t done before, from the Clay Bank area (about where I was yesterday) to Robin Hood’s Bay. He’s also doing an experiment, traveling with barely more than a daypack, a light jacket, and shorts, and the universe played him a joke by deluging him with rain.

Coming in from the storm, we gratefully shed our wet things and hang then up in the 1560s front room of Sycamore House. Mary drives off to collect their third and final guest for the night, and her husband, Jack, has two pots of tea and cookies waiting for Andy and me in the sitting room.

Like his wife, Jack is full of talk and tales and warm welcome. He and Mary walked the C2C path a dozen years ago and have gone back to do the bits they missed enjoying because of wet weather. They took the walk as “business research,” to understand what C2C’ers experience, and to check out the “accommodations and competition.”

“We saw all the rules that B&Bs have,” says Jack, “and we have only one rule: ‘Make yourself at home.’ And you don’t have to follow it if you don’t want to.” Sycamore House rapidly takes its place in my roster of top lodgings on the C2C.

Sycamore House has a core living space from the 1600s, and Jack shares its history with us. The age is not surprising, since the nearby Lion Inn itself dates back to religious times, when land was granted for a friary and the building began to be used to serve wayfarers to supplement their income.

The storm continues to rage, and by six o’clock, winds are whipping around the house, sending dull harmonics to reverberate over eaves and around house corners, moaning like breath blown through a bottle. Trees seems to billow with each gust, and sheep are all butt-first to the wind in the stone-walled fields beyond the front garden.

The other two guests here are also solo travelers—Andy from the Hull area and Brian from the York area. Jack drives all three of us to the Downe Pub in nearby Castleton for dinner. The three of us share a bottle of claret wine, lots of laughter over meal mix-ups, and talk over UK and US politics, the merits and nonmerits of art (such as the Tate Modern in London, which I haven’t seen yet), being in between jobs, being in the Now.

That last topic gets to me to thinking after I return to my guestroom and record the day’s events. We put so much merit on what we remember of the past, and how well we remember it, whether it’s our own past or that of others we once studied in grade school.

Yet to write about the past, to dwell in it, is often to escape fully feeling and experiencing the Now. I’ve noticed, recently, that I’ve been taking fewer photos on the trip. Sometimes I just forget to. Other times I don’t want to. Most of the time I don’t feel the need to.

I’m beginning to understand what Toni Morrison means when she says, “At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept, and you don’t need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens—that letting go—you let go because you can.”

What if I were to completely give up recording anything, whether by journal or camera or voice recording, to be reread, reseen, reheard later? What if I really enjoyed the Now of every moment as it is, without trying to capture it so that I’ll remember it again, for myself or for others?

Why do we place so much importance on our ability to remember the past, to collect again the memories associated with something? Is not most conversation merely remembering something we’ve seen or heard or felt, instead of being aware in the moment of what we’re currently thinking or seeing or feeling? We recall a similar taste of food, the place we were when we tasted it, a like experience we had elsewhere...always talking talking talking of the past or the future. Rarely saying, “This moment I feel, I think, I experience, I am.”

What would happen if I were to stop trying to capture knowledge for myself or others? It’s all a form of remembering the past—not only my past (which is big enough in itself to try to remember), but everyone else’s past, every other nation’s past, every society’s past. To me it’s so much mental clutter.

I haven’t been particularly interested in the archeology and history of England on this trip. Is this bad? Stupid? Foolish? Especially since this land is steeped in history?

Many would think so.

But I’m beginning less to think so. On this trip, I’ve been more interested in being in the space, feeling the space, feeling myself walk through the space as it is today, right now, not as it was then. I’ve already experienced this place in other times, anyway. Why not accept what it has to offer this lifetime around, and enjoy it?

Trail miles: 10; actual miles walked: 10.5