Day 18: Blakey Ridge to Glaisdale

A very short and easy day today, walking over the moors to Gaisdale. 

We left the Lion Inn around 9 AM after a leisurely and jolly breakfast with Steve and Anne, as well as Todd from Chicago.

The Lion Inn

The Lion in, as seen from Danby High Moor

The moor was full of red grouse, calling out with their weird part chicken, part Loon cries, startling us with their noisy sudden flight when we startled them, otherwise hiding in the heather or strutting about like chickens.

Peter approaching Trough House, a shooting lodge for some...

....an ideal place to pee for us (even had a bench on which to park our gear while peeing).

We ran into sheep who were scurrying down the path, running from the shepherd and herd dog who were gathering them in from the moor.

Black-faced Yorkshire sheep mother and child

 Another mother and child

 Scurrying to avoid the dog atop the moor; the pasturelands awaiting them below.

 On their way.

The day was fine with a strong wind at our back, about 60 degrees F.  and a mix of sun and clouds. Unfortunately, the brightness of the sky made it hard to capture both the subtle brownness of the moor and the intense greenness of the valley below.

 Glacial moguls standing between moorland grazing land above and valley fields and farms below

 Peter looking out toward the North Sea, but not really being able to make it out

 Heather, beginning to bloom

The bright sky makes the moor look even more foreboding than it actually appears to be.

 The farm road was flat, but the stones in it made for a bit of a hard walk.

Therese found a great use for one of the many Grouse Butts (the blinds from which grouse hunters shoot. No butt jokes, please!)

More sheep:

Nearly in Glaisdale... a local family of day hikers on their way up the moor

 Looking down into the village, as we descend the last bits of the moor

We arrived in the charming little village of Glaisdale (just off the moor) at about 1:30 PM.

 The Richardson Institute

 The Wesleyan Church (with a Wesleyan graduate and former faculty member in front of it :)

 An inviting butcher shop window

We found Steve and Ann just settling into coffee and light fare at the Arnecliff pub. We joined them before walking on a bit to our B&B, the Beggar's Bridge. They're going on to the next town, Grosmont, so as to be closer to Robin Hood's Bay, where they'll conclude their c2c walk to tomorrow (a 20+ mile day). We're splitting that walk into 2 days: a relatively short (8 mi) walk tomorrow to Littlebeck, and then concuding our c2c walk to Robin Hood's Bay with a 12 mile walk the next day (Sept 30, the end of the season for the bag carrying companies, like Pack Horse and Sherpa.

Mates!

The slowest walkers on the c2c and proud of it!

Goodbye until 2018 in Melbourne!

Peter standing on the Beggar's Bridge

Day 17: Great Broughton to Blakey Ridge

Today is the first time all trip that I'm posting the blog entry on the day we actually walked the route in the post. The reason being quite simple: we arrived at our destination (The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge) at 2 PM, leaving me plenty of time to do yesterday's and today's blog post.

Here are Therese's "pristine" feet, taken last night in Great Broughton; after 15 days of walking (more than 160 miles), narry a blister or blemish. (Photo NOT photo-shopped as Peter's wise-cracking step-brother charged.)

We awoke around 5AM to the sounds of ferocious winds. We ignored this frightening sound and went back to sleep only to toss and turn, imagining the conditions up on Urra Moor, which we'd be traversing most of the walk later this AM. We decided that, for the first time, we'd dress for cold weather (temps are expected to be 50, but winds could be up to 20 mph and by the sounds of it quite gusty.) When we inquired about the wind from our B&B host, he glanced out the window and in classic British fashion, commented that it didn't look especially bad at all.

After our first truly mediocre breakfasts of the trip, we got a ride from our B&B hosts from Great Broughton to the start of the track at Clay Bank Top and started off at about 9AM.

 Not a video, so you probably can't really tell how blustery it was as we started off, but the tree branches do give some indication.

The walk started off with a moderately long but not terribly steep climb over thankfully dry paving stones. (Not at all like yesterday.)

 The valley below and to our north (where our B&B was located) began to clear; we could at least imagine where the North Sea was located even if we couldn't exactly see it through the mist. (Note Roseberry Topping in the right corner of the photo.)

Looks like it'a often pretty windy on Urra Moor.

 Before long, the fog rolled in and it was hard to see very far in any direction. Truly, a foreboding prospect, just like in Wuthering Heights, which Therese is re-reading.

 The heather on the moor.

 More heather with some hills visible behind, as the fig temporarily lifted.

A brief glimpse of Farndale below and south of us; until a few minutes ago, we hadn't been able to see anything to that side of us due to the fog.

 The fog is rolling back in.

 The brown moor and the green valley below

Elevenses

 A farm in Farndale Valley below

 A young moor walker briefly joins us in the fog on a shortcut across a boggy piece of moor to the famous Lion Inn (4th highest Inn in England).

 The car park at the Lion Inn, a very popular destination for walkers and holiday-makers.

 A couple of inside shots; they don't really do it justice. It looks and feels like an Inn and Pub from hundreds of years ago.

Oh, that old bald guy, reading the Coast to Coast guide in the pub of the Lion is Peter.

At dinner with our new Aussie friends, Anne and Steve; we've been traveling at more or less the same rate since Reeth.