LEJOG day 39: Middleton-in-Teesdale to Langdon Beck

Oh, I have so little to say today.

Middleton-in-Teesdale is a nice enough little place but honestly quite quiet- a disadvantage of staying in a hotel (really a pub but let's not argue) is that you don't get paid attention to in quite the same way. My hosts at B&Bs have been uniformly excellent at directing me to more entertaining towns on my days off, when I've found myself short of things to do, but you don't really expect that in a larger establishment. As it turned out, there's a castle in Barnard Castle (unlike Ravock Castle) which I could have gone to see if I'd known it was there. Instead I had a long nap after breakfast, then had lunch and a wander around town, then read a lot.

Following this, I have had a seriously less-than-strenuous day's walk- a whole 8 and a half miles - in order to avoid standing outside the youth hostel for hours in the rain, I didn't leave until half past one - and tomorrow I am having another rest day. I know, I know, I'm pushing myself. But really what I'm doing is avoiding spending two more days walking over moorland in bad weather and hating it. I am pretty fed up of being wet, windblown and unable to see any of the landscape I've climbed above at this point and so instead of crossing the Pennines twice in two days, I'm going to sit in a very rural youth hostel reading and possibly doing a jigsaw of cats and then walk along some roads and past a reservoir to get to Alston. Then from Alston I'm walking along a railway - which we all know I love - to get to Haltwhistle, and I'm hoping that after four days away from the Pennine Way I'll have had enough of a change to be able to hack it for another two-and-a-half, and then as soon as we've crossed the border together I'm going to leave it forever and head to Jedburgh instead.

I have really had enough of moorland.

Distance walked: 8.66 miles
Time taken: 3h10
Percentage completed: 53.8% (turning over 30 miles into 16 will do that for you)
Miles per £1 of boot: 4.74
Days since I was last rained on: 0
Lunch: ham and cheese sandwich, in the same place as breakfast
Last night's accommodation: The Teesdale Hotel: comfortable but dated- the en suite didn't have a shower over the bath, but I'm not really complaining because after over 20 miles of wind and moorland, I loved that bath

 So glad I didn't climb that on Tuesday

Low Force! I couldn't get a good photo of High Force

Comments

  1. Are you still happy with all those rest days? You are so fit...

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    Replies
    1. I love my rest days! I'm needing them just now as I've come down with a cold- not as bad as Arne's legs though! Glad they're getting better :)

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