C2C Day 15, Carr Ridge (Mile 152.5)—So Remind Me: Why Did I Do This Walk?

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

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