mutteringhousewife

It was very hard to leave Frith Lodge. They had been so hospitable, the bed was so comfortable, the home cooked breakfast outstanding. Also, it was raining. But we’re walking across England, and that’s not going to happen by enjoying being inside. So raincoats and rain pants on and we were off onto the Pennine Way which crossed Frith Lodge’s driveway, on our way back to the Coast to Coast walk.

It was a day of up hills and down dales. As was often the case there was a high track and a low track option, so obviously we went with the high one which did entail more climbing. But this meant that we got to explore quite a bit of the local area’s (Swaledale) lead mining history. The first ruined building was Crackpot Hall, which seems to have started off life as a farmhouse some hundreds of years ago, got converted into a hunting lodge, then ended up as an office building for the lead mine before lead mine subsidence resulted in it being abandoned as a bit of irony for you.

The track passed a lot of crumbling bits of lead mine infrastructure, bits of bridges, corners of buildings. Some areas would have made a lovely spot for a picnic if it wasn’t windy and raining.

It was all rather picturesque for quite some time until we got up on top of the ridge to see a fairly desolate landscape that hasn’t recovered, even though mining here was abandoned early in the twentieth century. A TV program we saw with Wainwright walking this area had him actually sounding a bit nostalgic for the industry and thriving communities it supported, even as the presenter walking with him gently reminded him of the child labour and enormous mortality rates of the adult workers in the mines.

Even with all this, I did find the ruins very poignant.

The other fascinating thing about today’s walk was the grouse. As in, the bird. I’d seen a bird identification poster at Frith Lodge, so I was fairly sure that the awkward looking thing rising out of the heather in front of us making a sound like Mr Krabs laughing was actually a grouse. And I can’t understand why people hunt them for sport. I’ve never seen a bird fly so slowly, I’m fairly sure I could have taken it down with my trekking pole. I’d understand why you’d want to eat them, they look like they have a good amount of meat on them. We ended up seeing lots of them on the moors as we walked along, and they are quite hilarious.

Descending from the moors (and then unexpectedly re-ascending and descending a few more times) we gradually made our way into Reeth. We’d heard it had a celebrated village green, and our B&B was actually on the green. It turns out that a village green, for those that don’t know, is a patch of grass kind of in the open, possibly with kids kicking a ball on it. Bit underwhelming, could do with a coffee van.

But it was good to get out of the wet coat, wet pants, wet boots and wet socks, pull off the ankle strapping, divest myself of the knee brace, have a hot shower and get on to the pub on the other side of the green for dinner. Does every village have a Black Bull pub?