Day 9: Orton to Kirkby Stephen

Over breakfast at our B&B (The Orton Barn House), we chatted with the step-brothers we'd met the night before and Bill (a solo walker from St. Albans, VT who we'd seen the day before, resting by the glacial erratic on the moor). We learned later that Bill had had a stomach flu since day 1 and actually had to be taken to hospital by his host in Stonethwaite; we couldn't imagine how he'd made it across Dent Fell, up Loft Beck, and across Grey Knotts with a stomach flu.

Peter also suggested at breakfast that we should make an attempt to see if we could recover our lost money (which we now hypothesized Therese had dropped in the rain by Honnister mine) by taking a "drums along the Mohawk" approach: Tell everyone we meet about the lost money and ask them to spread the word as they travel along the path. In this way, perhaps someone will come upon someone who has heard-tell of a found money belt, and that news could be reported to the outfitter company who moves our bags every day. 

To be honest, Therese didn't have much faith in this method, but it seemed defeatist to not try it. And it did garner her a tremendous amount of sympathy from her fellow travelers, who expressed great empathic concern for losing such a valuable item. 

So we started the drumbeats at breakfast, and then started off to meet Rob and Sharon in front of the George Hotel. On the way, a gigantic hay truck whizzed by us on the country road that wasn't much wider than the truck. 

These photos of the truck are for our grandson, Theo.

And then we were off (around 9AM), leaving the "lost" village of Orton and its famous chocolate shop behind us and headed to the "city" of Kirkby Stephen (Kirkby means church, but the second "k" is silent, so it sounds like Kirby.)

We made our way through fields and meadows, walking along ancient stone walls...

... over stiles....

Peter and Sharon negotiating a stile

...across streams and along thinly wooded pasturelands...

... through open sheep meadows...

... passing through gates (each seemingly with a different type of latch) and over stiles (also of varying designs and construction) ...

... with Tarn moor looming before us...

 ... past Sunbiggin Farm

Some photo of a hay rake machine for Theo.

... and onto Tarn Moor... (after Andrew Wyeth, according our friend Jane Weisbin)

... where the Rough Fell sheep grazed and lazed... 

Once again, we passed areas labeled on our maps as being Grouse Butts and Shake Holes and Cairns, but if we saw any of these, we didn't recognize them.

 ...and on over Ravenstonedale Moor with the Pennines in the distance.

 Closer by, we faced the steep grassy hummocks, labeled Pillow Mounds on the map, but called "giants graves," by the locals...

 We emerged at Bent's Farm where grazed a new breed of sheep with large deer-like ears (called Cheviot)...

As we started down Smardale Fell, we thought we could just about make out the outskirts of Kirby Stephen, below.

But it was a lot longer to walk than to see...

"Are we there yet?"

Many more fences to cross (via stiles)...

 ... and streams to ford (over bridges)...

 ... before we neared some abandoned buildings, called Severals ("the Manchester of this region in prehistoric days"). It was right about here that we made our only mistake of the day. We missed a stile off to the right and had to scrabble over a wall (Rob & Peter) or squeeze through some fence (Therese and Sharon) before regaining the path.  There we encountered a gregarious local man walking his dog, who assured us that the more interesting and more direct walk to Kirkby Stephen was along the abandoned railway line alongside the river. But, we decided to stick with the roundabout route, which the man assured us would be about an hour to Kirkby Stephen. (We all smiled at this, realizing that would probably be more like 2 hours... and turned out to be more like 3 hours.)

An abandoned quarry near the dismantled railway

A double-row of fence...

A Rough Fells sheep

At last we're headed back to civilization (although Kirkby Stephen itself is still hidden behind some hills)

Now within clear sight of our destination, Sharon leads, while Peter and Rob check their respective navigational aids, and Therese brings up the rear (snapping photos).

After a series of zigs and zags, described as follows in our guidebook: "The path drops to the [well hidden] Waitby road, turns right and then down a second [hidden] road to Waitby, where after 150 yds. a stone wall stile leads right to a path angling down across a meadow on the edge of yet another prehistoric settlement---more lumps and bumps--- to the [disguised] underpass beneath the working Settle-Carlisle railway line...the path after the underpass is initially indistinct [understatement] but heads down and slightly to the right into an obvious [?] small valley, which then leads delightfully[?] down to the left. A stile takes you down the right-hand side of a hay meadow to the day's third disused railway line and Greenrigs, a farm with excellent signs through the muddy [i.e. poopy] yard... The farm lane leads gently into the town..."

Kirkby Stephen, at last!
(It was around 5 PM, a pretty long 8 hour day, leaving us all feeling pretty spent.)