LEJOG day 38: Keld to Middleton-in-Teesdale
There has been remarkably little about the past two days' walking that I can characterise as enjoyable. Which is to say: today was a proper stinker of a day, evidenced by the fact that I chose to walk 3 miles along a B-road with no pavement at the end, just to get it over with.
I always sort of knew today was going to leave me a little bit grumpy, what with its being over 19 miles long, but what I didn't know when I planned all this was that the weather was going to be utterly awful to boot. After 24 hours of non-stop rain, today this part of the world treated me to 24 hours of showers, what felt suspiciously like hail, and headwinds at roughly gale force.
Yesterday I felt all grumpy until I saw other hikers at lunchtime; today I was actually surprisingly cheerfully bounding along tracks through literally miles of bleak moorland with the wind in my face all morning- then straight after lunch I passed an information board which cheerily announced that the next 7.5 miles of the Pennine Way would be across Bowes Moor.
Moors, we all know, aren't my favourite. While Sarah was with me we decided to learn the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp- partly because OS marks marshes but uses the same symbol for bogs as for any rough grassland, which is seriously unhelpful- and key features of bogs include:
1. they are kept waterlogged by a sealed clay layer- which means all of the last 24 to 48 hours' worth of rain is unable to escape, leaving me walking over surfaces with the general consistency of soft polenta; and
2. they are unable to support any plant larger than a small shrub, so the wind comes howling across at you with no barrier for miles- I spent a lot of the day walking with the wind buffeting the left side of my face with a wall on my right, where it was no help at all.
Other sources of annoyance included the discovery that there is no castle at Ravock Castle; the constant hide-and-seek game the path kept playing with me; the total lack of a youth hostel at Baldersdale - which used to be there and would have cut 6 or so miles off today's route and given them to Thursday; the check-in staff at the hotel kindly suggesting that I have my dinner at 8pm so the kitchen staff could focus on serving a large group at 7:30.
The Pennine Way has so far proved itself to be very good at persisting in doing something horrible until I honestly think I can't take another minute, then stopping for just long enough that I'm lured onwards, before leaping straight back into whatever horrible thing it was doing before. Mostly, of course, the horrible things are moors, bad weather, and interminable climbs. But tomorrow is a day off, and after that I have the pleasure of a 9 mile walk along a river, to lull me into a false sense of security before the Pennine Way drags me over the top of the Pennines twice in two days at the end of the week.
Distance walked: 20.45 miles
Time taken: 6h30
Percentage completed: 52.4%
Miles per £1 of boot: 4.69
Lunch: two rounds of Wensleydale and chutney sandwiches and a bag of posh cheese and onion crisps; I had a banana and a flapjack later and on reflection some of my misery may have been hunger
Last night's B&B: Frith Lodge, outside Keld: look, you can only get to the place on foot or in a 4x4 but you should all go, it was wonderful
Note the glasses: this was before the weather got really bad
Ah, peat bog, my favourite
Seriously I'm beginning to think maybe the Brontës should have been glad to die young and escape all this
A BRIDGE!
I always sort of knew today was going to leave me a little bit grumpy, what with its being over 19 miles long, but what I didn't know when I planned all this was that the weather was going to be utterly awful to boot. After 24 hours of non-stop rain, today this part of the world treated me to 24 hours of showers, what felt suspiciously like hail, and headwinds at roughly gale force.
Yesterday I felt all grumpy until I saw other hikers at lunchtime; today I was actually surprisingly cheerfully bounding along tracks through literally miles of bleak moorland with the wind in my face all morning- then straight after lunch I passed an information board which cheerily announced that the next 7.5 miles of the Pennine Way would be across Bowes Moor.
Moors, we all know, aren't my favourite. While Sarah was with me we decided to learn the difference between a bog, a marsh and a swamp- partly because OS marks marshes but uses the same symbol for bogs as for any rough grassland, which is seriously unhelpful- and key features of bogs include:
1. they are kept waterlogged by a sealed clay layer- which means all of the last 24 to 48 hours' worth of rain is unable to escape, leaving me walking over surfaces with the general consistency of soft polenta; and
2. they are unable to support any plant larger than a small shrub, so the wind comes howling across at you with no barrier for miles- I spent a lot of the day walking with the wind buffeting the left side of my face with a wall on my right, where it was no help at all.
Other sources of annoyance included the discovery that there is no castle at Ravock Castle; the constant hide-and-seek game the path kept playing with me; the total lack of a youth hostel at Baldersdale - which used to be there and would have cut 6 or so miles off today's route and given them to Thursday; the check-in staff at the hotel kindly suggesting that I have my dinner at 8pm so the kitchen staff could focus on serving a large group at 7:30.
The Pennine Way has so far proved itself to be very good at persisting in doing something horrible until I honestly think I can't take another minute, then stopping for just long enough that I'm lured onwards, before leaping straight back into whatever horrible thing it was doing before. Mostly, of course, the horrible things are moors, bad weather, and interminable climbs. But tomorrow is a day off, and after that I have the pleasure of a 9 mile walk along a river, to lull me into a false sense of security before the Pennine Way drags me over the top of the Pennines twice in two days at the end of the week.
Distance walked: 20.45 miles
Time taken: 6h30
Percentage completed: 52.4%
Miles per £1 of boot: 4.69
Lunch: two rounds of Wensleydale and chutney sandwiches and a bag of posh cheese and onion crisps; I had a banana and a flapjack later and on reflection some of my misery may have been hunger
Last night's B&B: Frith Lodge, outside Keld: look, you can only get to the place on foot or in a 4x4 but you should all go, it was wonderful
... But not God's Bridge?
ReplyDeleteWell done Louise. Raining casts asnd dogs today,,isnt it?? We were so drained.
ReplyDelete