What a glorious day! The difference between the last stage and today was phenomenal. Yesterday's walk ended with a mad dash across a busy highway; today started out almost immediately walking a beautiful track through woods, easy underfoot with lots to look at. Apparently in Spring it would be resplendent with bluebells. But in Summer it was still pretty and a welcome change from the fields and muddy paths of the previous two days.
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| Wooded track |
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| Reminds me of Maine! |
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| Jack's favourite trees |
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| A surprise view |
I enjoyed every minute of the day, even the up- and downhill bits. The knee was
much better, as was Megan's. I had the most ridiculous bandage on, looked like I had perhaps had a replacement limb attached, but it did the trick so I don't care what it looks like!
The variety of terrain, views and even weather held our interest, not like the Vale of Mowbray at all.
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| "The hills are alive...." |
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| The North York Moors |
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We walked all the way to the hills on the horizon -
The 'bump' is Roseberry Topping or as Wainwright calls it, a miniature Matterhorn |
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| Another postbox! |
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| Old Railway Carriage |
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| Their fence is not very effective |
Perhaps I should explain my obsession with postboxes. Living in Zambia, post was something of a mystery. There was no residential postal service so we could not receive mail at our house; any communication with friends and family was all done via email.
I tried sending a couple of letters through Zampost, but the woman serving me was so vague, and the price so cheap I was sure they would never arrive. I'm still not sure they ever did. There was a company that would coordinate with a warehouse in the UK and another one in the USA to enable customers to shop with Amazon, etc, but we lost so many items that I gave up.
When I moved to the UK at the age of 7 years, the local postbox (and Mr Postman delivering to our house twice a day) saved my sanity. My sister and I must have sent and received hundreds of letters over the years - on hearing the post dropping through the letterbox, I would wonder, 'Is there anything for me?' It was so exciting.
The maintenance of rural location of postboxes across England (literally) has warmed my heart - as long as you have stamps at home, you can walk to your local postbox and send a letter or card. Old fashioned and traditional, perhaps - but I love them. Hence, all the pictures of postboxes. (I have not included all of them!)
We had some terrific views for a good section of our walk of paragliders flying above the Moors, in the direction we were walking. When we got to Carlton Moor, we found a number of guys with paragliders at the top, waiting for their turn to catch the thermals. Doobs nearly got caught up in one as the wind unfortunately changed direction slightly as the paraglider was about to take off. Not sure what he'd have done if they guy had taken of with Doobs tangled in the fabric - he's maintained ever since his trip to New Zealand that he'll never fly again.
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| Watch out Doobs! |
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| Awesome views |
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| On the top of Cringle End |
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| Looking back at Cringle End |
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| Wain Stones on Hasty Bank |
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| Looking through boulders at Wain Stones |
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| Pat and Doobs |
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| Some nutter |
Stats don't lie: today we climbed more than on any other day of this walk, even in the Lake District area. 2846 ft of elevation was gained today, the 2nd top day for climbing was Patterdale to Shap. It was tough - almost 13.5 miles; the next two days will be longer, each around 19 miles. Oh deary deary me.
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| Showing elevation gain |
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| No wonder we are exhausted - up, down, up, down! |
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