Day 15 - Littlebeck to Robin Hood's Bay

On a cold November morning (aka 9 a.m. September 10, 2013) we set off for the last leg of our hike across England.  Eleven miles later, on a bitter, raw February afternoon (aka 3 p.m. September 10, 2013) we reached the sea and completed our trip.  Today we experienced, rain, sleet, cold, and howling winds which came close to knocking us over.  For quite awhile, walking across a moor, I watched as my hiking poles landed 2 feet to the side of where I aimed them as the were blown by the wind.  Next time I hike, I'm going to do it in the summer.

As we left Intake Farm, we got to see a sheep herding exhibition when the farmer sent his border collie to the far end of the field we were walking along.  Within seconds, an entire herd of sheep was racing by with just the one dog behind them.

Within a mile or so, we passed both The Hermitage, and Falling Foss.

The Hermitage is a large boulder which has had a room with a bench carved into it.  If you build this wonder in Sid Maier's Civilization, you double the culture of the city in which it was built,  You must have an opera house in every city.

The Falling Foss waterfall.  We had several people recommend that we stop for tea at the tea shop here, but we passed by only about an hour after a large breakfast at Intake Farm.

After seeing these sites, we decided that it was time to once again get lost while walking through pastures. This time we got so lost that we had to bushwhack through several fields to get to a road, and roadwalk to a trail crossing at Hawsker.  At Hawsker we stopped at a pub called the Rabbit and Amoeba or something like that for tea and soup.  It took me five minutes to get my raincoat off because my fingers were too cold to work the zipper.

Leaving Hawsker, we walked about an hour and reached Robin Hood's Bay.  It's a pretty seaside town and I took several pictures  while walking through, all of which are the quality of the one below of the B&B.  I didn't notice the lens was fogged.  

At the end of the trail, I put my pebble from the Irish Sea into the North Sea, and the hike was done.  I went right to the store where you can get a Coast to Coast completion certificate, but they were closed.  A note on the door said to order one online.  I should post the url so anyone reading this can get one.

At the sea

B&B

Irish Sea stone from St Bee's

is now a North Sea Stone.  I was about 200 yards from the town when I dropped this at the edge of the sea at low tide.  The water is now up to the town walls.

We are just back from our celebration dinner.  Earl and Lois are staying in the UK for a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I travel back to Paisley, stay there Thursday and fly home Friday.  The next post for this blog will be when I get home

Day 14 Glaisdale to Littlebeck

Last night I was afraid that I would miss completing this walk by 19 miles.  I have a bunch of blisters, which I can live with, but after resting awhile in bed, I got up and found I couldn't put any weight on my right foot.  I went back to bed, tested it during the night and found it improved, and was much better in the morning.  I think the pounding of 58 miles in 3 days had just caused some real soreness.

Today was much like a day off.  We had only an 8 mile walk to Littlebeck.  The first 4 miles were mostly flat through a few nice villages.  We arrived in Grosmont just in time to see a train pulled by a steam engine leave town.  Grosmont has a steam engine depot and we walked around the repair sheds for awhile.  We waited to see another steam engine pull in and then headed out.

Our only real climb of the day started while we were still in Grosmont.  It's the final steep climb on the trail and they saved a good one for last.  We passed a couple of 33% grade warning signs.

After wandering through the moors, we had a short roadwalk before turning to some farmland and arriving at our night's stop, the Intake Farm.  This is a working farm with sheep and 160 cows.  We are in the farmhouse for the night.  I took a nap when we first got in and was woken up by sheep and cows being driven past my window.  We just finished the best meal of the trip which included a dish made from one of their own cows.  We shared dinner with a British couple who are here doing day hikes, and 2 ladies from Denmark who we met on day 1 and never saw again until yesterday.

Right now we are having a thunderstorm.  The rain is here and it looks like tomorrow's final 11 miles into Robin Hood's Bay will be wet.

Welcoming committee at Intake Farm

World's oldest railroad tunnel

Beggar's Bridge

Pub where Earl did not have a beer

A very common street sigh.  I think it means "Man having difficulty raising beach umbrella ahead"

We passed the Robinson Institute in Glaisdale.  I suppose it is for the study of Robinsons.

Day 13 Great Broughton to Glaisdale

19 fairly easy miles today with only one big climb right at the beginning.  It actually turned out to be about 21 miles due to a missed turnoff, some indecision which caused us to retrace our steps and then decide we were right in the first place, and a B&B that is off the trail.

Since keeping a wifi connection for more than 5 minutes seems to be impossible in this part of the country, I'll try again tomorrow to finish this and add pictures from today and yesterday.

Continuing the next day -- I just added pictures for day 13.  Unfortunately, I added them to day 12.

At the completion of this day, we had done 58 miles in 3 days.

Trying to write about a day the next day is very difficult.  The whole hike seems to run together.  We have trouble remembering what town we are in let alone where we were.

I was surprised we made it to the B&B at Glaisdale.  The directions read "one half mile before Glaisdale (how do I know I'm one half mile from a town I can't see yet?) look for a tarn (that's a lake) on the right.  It may be dried up (now I'm looking for something that may or may not be there at a place that I have no way of identifying)" Lois saw what I thought was a large puddle and said it was a tarn.  We turned off the trail and walked a long way downhill.  All I could think about was climbing back up that hill. She was right and we found the B&B.

Day 12 - Ingleby Cross to Great Broughton

Very iffy internet service tonight, so this may be short and there will be no pictures until i can add them later.

We did a slow relaxing 12 miles today.  We didn't even leave until 10 a.m.  The route was what hikers describe as a rollercoaster.  Up and down, up and down, with not much flat walking in between.  The only extended flat walk we had was across a live moor which had a cold and very hard wind blowing across it.

We are all very accustomed to walking at this point and aren't much bothered by the ups and downs.  Earl has a problem with rocky downs because of his bad knee.

We got our first glimpse of the North Sea today.  That's where we will finish on Tuesday.

Today's weather was great, especially compared to yesterday's all day rain.  We met one Brit today who said the weather here is 10 months of winter and 2 months of bad weather.  That's not what we've experienced.

Last night I watched England vs Moldavia with a couple of Brit coast to coast section hikers.  i was really tired and went to bed early.  At 1 p.m., my cell phone rang.  It was the Opera Company of Philadelphia trying to sell me a season pass.  I expressed my displeasure.

Tomorrow is 19 miles to Glaisdale.  That is 50% of the remaining hike!

These pictures should be on the day 13 page.  Oh well!

We had a very long walk along this disused railway on the moors.

Grouse Butts - little one man forts used for shooting grouse

Fat Betty - a statue in the middle of nowhere.  There are pieces of candy on top.  You are supposed to take a sweet and leave a sweet.  There is also money there. I guess some people just buy a sweet.

Another long roadwalk

Day 11 - Richmond to Ingleby Cross

25 miles. 10 hours and 50 minutes. Rain.  It rained for 25 of the 25 miles.  It rained for 10 hours and 50 minutes.  We got wet.  The walk was not difficult but the rain and wind were draining.  There are very few pictures because it was too much trouble to unzip my jacket pocket and take the camera out.

Still Dry

Richmond

Richmond

I can't say for sure that we didn't pass a unicorn, but if we had, I wouldn't have noticed because I had my head down against the rain and my eyes on the trail in front of me

Day 10 Reeth to Richmond

Another pretty easy hike.  All of these easy hikes have been building up to tomorrow's 24 miler.  We are also expecting our first real rain tomorrow.  The forecast is rain all day, although only 1/2 inch with a high of 56 degrees (that's 3.7 microliters in British temperature) and a 10-20 mph wind.  Sounds lovely.

Today was a very nice day.  It even got to the point where it became a little too warm for hiking.  We really appreciated a couple of forest walks that were on the route.  They were much cooler.

We fell behind a large group of hikers we sometimes travel with.  Later we spotted them ahead and started following them even though Lois and I thought they had made a wrong turn. After about 1/2 mile (37.6 centigrades) we were not only sure it was the wrong way  but we figured out we were following a group of locals out for a walk.

After today we won't see our regular group for awhile as most of them are taking a rest day in Richmond (the largest town we see) before attempting the 24 mile hike.

Our host this morning at the Cambridge House told us that the rabbits were dying of a disease called myxomatosis  http://www.petmd.com/rabbit/conditions/viral/c_rb_myxomatosis#.UijIkVWzKpg.  He said it pops up every so often, thins the herd, and within 6 months everything is back to normal.

Reeth

Reeth

The River Swale

Another type of stile.  This picture didn't turn out well.  I am holding a spring loaded gate which rests against an opening in the wall.

I call this a"sheep can't fit through it but neither can I" stile.  These are really tight My feet get stuck in them.  They are especially dangerous to my glasses which are kept in my hiking shorts pocket.

Lois on a High Stile

The other side of the same stile

Sheep like shade

Rabbit killer????

The view from my room.  You can't tell because my camera is junk, but I can see an abbey, a castle, the River Swale and way off into the distance.

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Day 9 - Keld to Reeth

Today's 11 mile hike from Keld to Reeth took 7 hours, but that included a 1 hour stop at the Muker show, a 45 minute lunch at the Ghyllfoot Tearooms and Penny Farthing Bistro in Gunnerside and a long diversion up a hill due to path work that apparently wasn't even happening.

Lois and the group leaving Keld

After an hour or so we reached the town of Muker.  We could hear a band playing from way down the valley.  Today was Muker Show Day which is like a county fair.  Music, food, and lots of displays.  There was a sheep herding contest.  People brought their border collies who tried, usually unsuccessfully to herd sheep.  I was even able to buy a couple of small and very light souvenirs for the granddaughters.

Antique tractors

My pin in New Jersey on the "Where are you from" map

The show from above

Macs Adventures provides us with detailed maps of the route, but more importantly, they provide a very good guide book with a hundred or more local maps.  These are how we navigate.

This is a portion of today's hike.  Notice the notes such as fallen tree, low wall, bench ... These are very helpful, especially when looking for a turn.  We didn't see any rabbits in the rabbit metropolis.  I'll explain why below.

This is an elevation map which we have for each day.  This is from day 2 when I was complaining about climbing Loft Beck.  That's the nearly vertical rise on the right.

Everyone walking this trail is commenting on the number of dead rabbits we are seeing.  In the past 2 days, I don't think you can walk more than 100 yards without seeing a dead rabbit lying by the side of the road or squashed on the road.  We can't figure out if they are sick, or if there is a rabbit eradication program going on.  Some of the live ones we see look sluggish.  That must be why so many are being hit on these lightly traveled roads.  Future guidebooks may have instructions like "turn left at the 42nd dead rabbit".  We can't find anything on the internet about this, so we must just be imagining it.

We came across some interesting ruins late in the day

Today was the day the cows finally decided they were sick of us and decided to block our route through their  pastures.  Within a half hour period, we had to stop a couple of times and wait for angry looking cows to move.  Here are the culprits.