mutteringhousewife

It turns out we were not destined to get the full high moors experience with sweeping views of the valleys below. For today started out even more foggy than yesterday, which again means not as many photos. We knew that we had a pretty light day today, so didn’t tear ourselves away from the Lion until about ten (after buying T-shirts). I thought I might have to physically drag the Commander out as they’d just lit the fires as we were leaving and it was so deeply uninviting outside.

It wasn’t raining, but there was a fair bit of wind to whip the fog around. We couldn’t really be bothered putting on raincoats so just went with being slightly damp and collecting dewdrops on our facial hair. The track was mostly along the road (which had a decent verge for a change) or on very clear tracks. The small bit we did on a narrow track through the moor made us feel very isolated from the world indeed with such limited visibility.

We didn’t find the Young or Old Ralph stone, but we did manage to locate Fat Betty in the fog and continue the tradition of leaving a sweet and taking a sweet. There wasn’t a huge choice, someone had left a biscuit from the Lion. The Commander had a collection of biscuits from a range of establishments and left some wrapped chocolate chip biscuits, and took a weird orange mini chocolate wafer bar thing. Who starts these things.

Eventually we started to descend into Glaisdale, and the air got very gradually clearer as we went down, and there were sadly less grouse. I’ll miss the grouse, they’re such silly looking things. There were still sheep, though.

Glaisdale wasn’t much to look at (Wainwright didn’t think so either), but apparently was North Yorkshire Small Town of the Year in 2002. It appeared to have no shops at all until we were nearly out of village when we came across the Arncliffe Arms. This was a welcome toilet stop. Coffee was advertised on the sign, and it was too early for a pint, so we ordered a flat white. The stripling behind the bar looked blankly at us, then studied the coffee descriptions pinned up beside the machine. ‘Americano with milk’ called out a passing barmaid. So a few minutes later he proudly delivered a couple of conical glasses to our table. Except that he’d not heated the milk. So we pretended that they were slightly warm iced lattes and had a bit of a laugh about it until we paid and they charged us eight bucks a pop for them. Don’t get coffee in pubs, lesson learned.

It was a very scenic walk down to Egton Bridge, starting with the Beggar’s Bridge just outside Glaisdale which has a very fanciful story attached to it that you can look up at your leisure.

After that was a tranquil wooded walk on what seemed to be ancient stepping stones, some of them quite concave with what I’m hoping has been centuries of woodland wanderers.

I was surprised to reach today’s destination – the Horseshoe Inn – at around 3:30pm after only nineteen kilometres and still feeling very fresh. The Horseshoe seems to be pleasantly eccentric, with a random assortment of eating rooms, an impressive collection of taxidermy, and staircases all over the place.

I hope we sleep well, because tomorrow looks huge. Almost thirty kilometres, with rumours of a big climb, moors, bog, and a final sea cliff walk to mirror the one we started with to take us to journey’s end. Not sure when I’ll get a chance to blog about it, because we have a date with our American friends to drink beer at the Wainwright bar after dipping our filthy boots in the North Sea and disposing of the pebble we picked up at St Bees (one of them, we took one each to keep as well that has travelled in our daypacks). You’ll hear about it at some point, never fear.