Our Last Day on Dales Way - Burneside to Bowness-on-Windemere

Sadly but yet with some great exhilaration and feeling of coming accomplishment, we packed up our backpacks for the last time, and after a too-brief nights sleep in the Jolly Angler, headed downstairs for a "Full English" and morning tea. Leaving Burneside, we quickly rejoined the River Kent and walked along its banks, enjoying the wildlife and scenery. 

About a mile upstream, we crossed over a small stone bridge and while checking our map, noticed a sign on the adjacent building denoting it as the home of The Handsome Brewery. Now Joan, who prefers lager beers (in this, the land of craft ales and pub-pulls) had tried a beer with diner last night and really liked it. She had been told it had been brewed by a craft brewer "about a mile away from Burneside", so Joan, figuring this must be the place, went over and knocked on the door, which shortly opened and a young man stepped out. Turned out he was indeed the brewer and asked Joan to come inside and tell him more about what she liked about his beer. Wow - she, who never has been a big beer drinker- was being asked to do a taste test and give a testimonial of "Handsome's" brews!  So, even though it was only about 9:30 in the morning, Joan did her best! It turns out that he named the brewery after his cat - a BIG handsome jet black cat who did his best to keep the place free of mice and licked up spilled beer.

There was one special segment just after we broke for lunch just after Glen Rowan, where the pathway left the empty country road leading to Hag End (don't you love these names?). The guide book said some nasty things about the path ahead (" a particularly bumpy and unkempt field with gorse thickets and long grass.."; "muddy path"; "posts lead across a rough field") but after a team discussion, we decided to take the official way rather than continue walking on the boring paved road, even though both routes came together further ahead. Serendipity strikes again; this turned out to be one of our most enjoyable sections. There were great views of the high rough mountains surrounding the Lakes, and we experienced no "rough walking" or "gorse thickets"  and all in all, just a fine walk in gorgeous country, with no other walkers in sight.
 
It occurs to me that I already did make an Facebook posting back on July 3 of our finishing day, which captured our feelings quite well. It read:

" Yesterday was our final walking day on this trip and was punctuated with an exclamation point at the finish with a gorgeous view of Lake Windermere at the bench at the finish. The reminder on the sign "Ilkley 81 miles" we found to be sightly inaccurate, since we found British miles to be an elastic concept; both Joan & l and I measured closer to 95 miles on our pedometers.

Just to elaborate a bit on those "elastic miles". As an example, as we were approaching Bowness and thought we were getting close, there was a road sign noting "Bowness - 1 mile", from which we took encouragement. After walking for about a mile through several gates and past numerous homes, we came to an road intersection near the Bowness Golf Club, where another road sign told us: "Bowness - 1 mile". Hmmm?  We dutifully plowed along the pathway for 30 minutes more and then, coming upon an elderly woman walking towards us with her little Corgi dog, we asked: "Is this the right road to Bowness?" and were told: "Yes, dears - its only about 20 minutes ahead." 

Even the Dales Way Association takes note of this flexible miles concept. We usually purchase a badge denoting completion of each of our long-distance walks that we affix to the our back-packs. We proudly wear these badges for The Cotswold Way, South Downs Way and most special, our completion of the Camino de Santiago Sanabres earlier this year. Here's the Dales Way badge. Note the bottom line: "82 Miles or Thereabouts".  That sums up the whole "Elastic Miles" concept. 

However, the real point of our long-distance walking is not to just log miles; it's to make new memories & friends.

 

 Once we finally got to Bowness and sat on the official bench denoting our completion, we memorialized the bitter-sweet moment with some pictures.

My Facebook post summed it up pretty well "However long, the walk was gorgeous, with long stretches along river such as the Wharfe, Lune and Kent. Other times we were high up on solitary wind-swept moorlands, with vistas that went to the far-away horizon. We had rain, sunny days and winds to test our resolve and shared most of the walk with our dear friend Elaine Hopkins , aka "Tigger"

Thanks for everything,Tigger! You are a stabilizing and experienced "third leg" of Team Turtle and we are eagerly looking forward to our next adventure together. We are planning on walking the Camino Ingles from Canterbury in England to Santaigo de Compostela in Spain, by way of La Coruna, the traditional route taken by English pilgrims in the Middle Ages. 

Day Seven - Bramerskew to Burneside on Dales Way

Well, this was a day to remember! It was supposed to be an 11 mile jaunt (remember: - "You can push a baby pram on this trail." - but turned out instead to be a 15 mile monster with stretches of dangerous riverside root-bound goat trails; of nettle-clogged overgrown pathways; of manure-laden & hoof-pocked hillside meadows; of poor signage and misleading Trailblazer guidebook maps and of just a long day of walking ten hours in chilly moist weather. This day will become better in the retelling but just writing about it now brings  back some frustrating moments. However, as Elaine put it during a Team Turtle "group hug" as we neared the end in Burneside, "Nobody fell over and nobody fell out"!

 So we left Ash Hining Farm in Bramerskew around 8:45 am and made our way down to the Dales Way trail running alongside the Lune River. Most of the track was fine, with gorgeous views, fine fields and the inevitable stone wall crossings. But soon we moved higher & close alongside the river and hit a really dangerous stretch of trail, a quarter-mile section that was frequently interlaced with a web of tree roots etched into the narrow dirt path, too often hugging the edge of a sharp drop some 30 feet down to the water below. No "baby prams" were being pushed here! 

And even worse as we were spread out carefully crossing this stretch was the sudden appearance behind us of two women struggling with a rambunctious dog on a leash. They didn't wait for us to clear but just rushed ahead to overtake and pass us, brushing close by Elaine and nearly causing her to lose her footing and possibly fall down the steep bank onto the rocks in the water below. A  scary moment for sure - we were too busy just surviving to take any pictures.

But made it we, and soon were rewarded with the sight of the Crook of Lune bridge, dating back to the 16th century. The white farm house just beyond dates to 1750 and although we were getting close to the busy M6 highway, it was quiet and peaceful here.

We also were treated to the Lowgill Viaduct, with it's 11 arches soaring nearly 100 feet over our heads as we crossed under it. As we moved on and approached the M6, there was both a "sparkle moment" and a "this really sucks" experience; luckily, the former came the latter. Walking up to the cluster of buildings called "Lakethwaite" and going through yet another gate, there appeared a small cooler sitting on a bench with a note saying "Cold Drinks - 1£". Inside were ice cold Pelligrino orange and lemon drinks - and a place to put the empties!

This almost offset the nasty meadow section with grazing cows we'd walked through just before to find this nice surprise. Unmarked and set crossing a sloping hillside, the half-mile trail (when we could find it) was deeply pocked with cow hoof-prints just deep enough to catch and turn an unwary ankle.

It was  getting close to 1 PM after we'd crossed over the bridge spanning the M6 and walked through new-cut hay fields and more big grazing cows. We climbed for a bit through overgrown brambles & ferns and then unexpectedly came out onto the grounds of the 18th century Moresdale Barn B & B, set high up on the crest of the hill with amazing views of the Howgill range ahead. There was a big farm table & chairs set out back and after asking permission from the owner, we settled there for our lunch and mid-day break.

After lunch, we kept walking for miles through sometimes muddy (sometimes very muddy!) fields, through free-range chicken farms, past more cows and sheep, past camping sites and farm houses. It was getting close to five pm and the Dales Way trail signs seemed to have gone on holiday. Somewhere around Honeypot Cottages, we saw a cheering sight, as a paddock holding several small ponies was just to our left. They were racing around the small field, obviously having fun and filling with us with their joy of being. 

Then right after this energy bump, there was a long stretch near Burton House (just past the big manure piles) when we absolutely could not decipher the map and trail notes (note: mapmakers - do not put confusing trail sections at the edge of maps and split it into two maps- please!) and after taking a chance and walking a half-mile through an empty field, we finally realized it was taking us west when we knew we should be trending north. So we retraced our steps and had a trail-side general meeting of Team Turtle to figure out what to do next. Frustration was leading to tempers sometimes flaring but we worked it out and found our way finally to a trail marker for our destination - Burneside. It was getting close to 6:15 pm by now, we still had a couple of miles to go and everyone was getting tired of this bad day.

After finally getting to where we could see our town and deciding to walk the small busy road into it rather than bushwhack for the next stretch into Burneside (pronounced "Burn-knee-side" by the locals).  This meant stepping into the roadside bushes whenever a vehicle approached or passed us, since there was absolutely zero road-space for walkers. We eventually crossed a bridge over the River Kent and headed into town. Our lodging was the Jolly Angler Inn & Pub and at 7 pm, after nearly 10 hours and 15 miles, we found they stopped serving dinner at 8. 

But the new owners were great and the food wonderful! They had a full English breakfast for us next morning and even fixed a travel sandwich for our last day into Bowness-on -Windemere.

Day Six - Dent to High Bramerskew on Dales Way

"These are the times that try men's soul." Little did we know how Thomas Paine's words would apply to we three hardy travelers from now on in rural Yorkshire England, as we walked today what turned out to be 12 miles in eight sometimes frustrating & often anxious hours towards a seemingly ever-receding place called "High Bramerskew". It was quite a day!

 As we left Dent in the morning, the weather had cleared and the route alongside the River Dee was gorgeous. The change in the color of the stones in walls and buildings was our only indication that we had crossed a major geologic fault separating the Carboniferous period limestone landscape of the Dales and the much older Silurian slate & sandstone rocks we would be walking through from now on on our way to the Lakes Region. Hey, I was a geology major, you know? We soon entered Milthrop, another of those "too pretty to be real" little English towns, and very close to Sedburgh, the site of a famous private school that was a major landowner in the area. We also would soon be leaving the Dales Way National Park and that would have unforeseen implications later on for us insofar as trail maintenance and signage.

Milthrop is a pretty town, with a row of flower-laden  cottages lining both sides of the street. We came down off the high ground and after chatting for a while with a young farmer and his wife (and dog) heading back up the lane, found an inviting bench in the village upon which to sit for a bit.  The care & loving attention of the owners here was evidenced by the roadside front door flower gardens and one particularly imaginative use of recycled rubber  "wellies" into very friendly dogs. These puppies were for sale but way too big to fit into our backpacks and take home.  After refreshing ourselves with an energy bar and lots of water, it was time to head on. So far, all was well.

We soon found ourselves walking along another river and realized we had left the Dee and were now tracing the Rawthey River. We walked through a cricket pitch and immaculately kept playing grounds of the Sedburgh School and soon passed under an high abandoned iron railway bridge.

After continuing on and passing through areas (too small to be called villages or towns) with names like BIrks and Catholes, we left the Rawthey, headed up to a height of land and soon joined with the Lune River, crossed by another huge stone viaduct; this beauty is also now unused and blocked off but must have been a sight in the old days whenever a steam-puffing train traveled the tracks. 

We noticed the Dales Way signage was diminishing in frequency and the Trailblazers guidebook had little information about how to find either High Bramerskew or our B & B for the night, Ash Hining Farm. After an ill-considered attempt to take a shortcut ate up a mile of so of our diminishing energy & time, we finally emerged at Low Bramerskew, consisting of one farmhouse. Now what? Where was "High Bramerskew"? No signs to show us or people to ask. It was getting dark under encroaching rain clouds and we were tired. 

Joan walked up to the farmhouse to see if anyone was home and I walked down along a farm track to a brook looking for signs; Elaine studied the guidebook, looking for clues. After finding nobody and nothing respectively, Joan called the Ash Hining number in our guidebook and spoke to the owner, who gave us clear directions - which we promptly screwed up by taking a right at the first fork rather than a left as instructed. So we called Jim (the owner) again and were told we were "just a field" away, so cross the stone wall, walk up a hill to the power transmission line and there Ash Hining would be - just ahead.

So we did - and there it was. Jim came out to talk us in ("Don't use that gate - you'll let the cows out!") and soon we were relaxing in a painstaking restored & modernized old farmhouse, having a welcoming cup of tea and a sweet. Our room was big with a king-sized comfortable bed. Jim drove us about two miles to Sedburgh for diner that night, at the Three Hares restaurant and later picked us up at 8 for a good nights sleep.

Day 5 - Ribblehead to Dent

Sometimes all the planning in the world doesn't stop the bad stuff you're trying to avoid from happening anyway. That turned out to be the case today. Our trusty Trailblazer guidebook said " head northeast across Blea Moor for a couple of miles across often saturated ground" and also noted a "> <" symbol at one point on the path (thus indicating a minor down & up will be encountered).  We thus experienced one of the perils in having one's guide book compiled by someone whose resume includes more daunting experiences - things like the fact that he makes his living leading people up Mt. Kilimanjaro!

Off we set around 8:30 from Ribblehead, walking down the moderately busy road for a mile & a half back to Far Gearhead, where we turned left off the road, and headed up the first hill. It was raining slightly but not too bad, as we were dressed in our rain gear. We soon passed Winshaw House and a sign that said "You're half way there now"; which we later realized should have been interpreted like the sign reading "I'd go back now, if I were you" in the movie "The Wizard of Oz". 

The rain picked up as we climbed the first steep grassy slope. Upon reaching the top, the Dales Way path took us to the brink of a jaw-droppingly steep  gulch in our way, with our mud-covered path disappearing into a fan of alternative pathways where slippery steps had been worn into the 100' down-slope. At he bottom was a swollen stream and then it was up in the same manner on other side. This was also about the time that Joan noticed that her previously water-proof Merrill hiking boots were taking on water and I that my new FroggTogg rain jacket seemed to be getting quite damp - on the inside! And yes, we did experience lots & lots of the "often saturated ground" that had been spoken of in the guidebook; in particular, I vividly recall the time I sunk into it up to my knees.

The wind was picking up and it was getting colder too. Joan & Elaine remarked that that they half expected Heathcliff to appear from over the brow of the next hill! There were several more of these gulches on the way and even the groups of young folks we met didn't look too happy (walking towards us, on a DofE program (Duke of Edinburgh Award) camping trip), heavily laden as they were with full camping gear. Incidentally, it is at Blea Moor that the falling rain starts flowing into the Irish Sea to the west, rather than eastward towards the English Channel, as had been the case up to this point. The Dales Way signage also seemed to grow sparser, as if to tell us that there was really one direction to go; we often felt that a good "confidence sign" here & there would have been a really good thing.

When we had finally crossed the open moor and reached Dent Road it was about noon & time to stop for lunch. My new rain gloves that I'd bought in Hawes had proved to be a disaster, since the soft inner lining fingers were not attached to the outer "waterproof" shell and just bunched up inside. In frustration, I finally gave in to my inner devils & just threw them away. We sat on a nearby stone wall to rest a bit and opened our lunches - sandwiches, fruit & an energy bar for us; a hard boiled egg & canned tuna for Elaine. Joan's boots were pretty well soaked and it seemed a good time to find a warm pub and have an afternoon tea. So we headed down the long decline into Stone House and passed under the towering Dent Head Viaduct. This was made of huge marble stone blocks cut from the quarry nearby and rose 100 feet over us as we passed right underneath through one of it's arches.

A few miles later, we found the Station Inn, open and waiting for us. Entering, we stripped off our wet outer gear in the almost empty pub (with a fireplace going nicely) and soon hot tea and scones made everything seem all right again. 

It was only a few more miles to Dent, our destination for the night, where we planned to take a rest day. Joan & I were staying at the Sun Inn while Elaine was booked at the nearby Garda View B & B . 

Dent gets my vote for being one of the Top Ten Most Picturesque Towns in England, although this is  tough list to compile, there being so many lovely little towns in England. Dent has it all though, in one small walk-able package:

• cobblestone streets, many too narrow for a lorry to fit through, 
• a medieval church with a vampire story and gravestone, 
• two great pubs,  the Sun Inn as well as the George & Dragon Inn (great name!)
• the River Dee bubbling nearby, under lofting sheep-covered hills
• a little museum of the towns long history and local lore, industry & people.

We spent a relaxing rest day following our tough 12 mile walk into Dent, drying clothes out and patching our dampened vitality with the realization & retelling of the difficulties and privations we'd encountered and actually "soldiered through" on the rainy windswept moors of the long slog from Ribblehead. Somehow the miracle of memory enhancement seemed to make the hard stuff we'd sworn at while it was happening soften and get wrapped into a good feeling of accomplishment. Thank goodness for selective memory!
 

June 26th - Hubberholme to Ribblehead

Sometimes discretion is the better part, etc, etc.  We awakened early in Hubberholme to the sound of drumming rain on the windows and the forecast was not encouraging. The next stage is 13 miles long and isolated (we will be out of cell phone coverage up on the dales and there are no villages) and a lot of it is on boggy flat hilltops like what we experienced two days ago on the section before Kettlewell; it is lonely, exposed and windswept.

Another critical factor is that we're planning to meet up with Elaine Hopkins (our "third turtle") somewhere en route, since she's a faster walker and should catch up with us around mid-day. She's starting in Kettlewell, 6 or so miles behind us on her 19 mile walk, but on a day like this, considering that the trail markings & signposts seem to be much less evident on the high moors, we're concerned that there is a real chance that either of us might get lost or confused or even have a chance of spending a night, without food or shelter, up there in the emptiness. Joan & I decide we need a Plan B, so we called Elaine early before she could leave and told her to take a cab to the George Inn. Once we're all together, we'll figure out what to do.

So around 8, Elaine showed up at the George Inn and after much hugs & kisses, we decided to take a taxi into Hawes - a old (circa AD 1300) market town in North Yorkshire about 10 miles away - and wait out the day there. Then in the afternoon, we thought we could get a taxi 10 miles to Ribblehead and skip this stage altogether. After all, this is a holiday walking journey, not a competition to see who can be the most uncomfortable! 

Ed, the kindly owner of the George Inn, called a taxi for us and we rode over to Hawes around 9:30. As we entered town, I was thrilled to see a big dairy facility that proclaims itself to be the source of Wensleydale cheese. Now for those of us who are fans of Wallace & Gromit, the stars of such clay animation film classics as "The Wrong Trousers", "A Close Shave" and "Curse of the Were-Rabbit" will recall that Wallace enjoyed nothing so much a having a "nice little Wensleydale, Gromit". And here we are in the home of Wallace's delight; the "mother church' of cheese, so to speak.

We walked around town, stopping to pick up things at the chemist (pharmacy), grocery store (Cadbury bars and Wensleydale cheese) and the Mountain Madness sport shop (gloves for me). After browsing the shops along the way, we ended up at the Hawes Rope-makers operation, which is a 150 year-old  family run business that showed us hand-on how rope is made. Fascinating stuff!  

The rain had swollen the streams in the area and made us appreciate the wisdom of our decision to stay off the high moors on this day. After a nice lunch at a little shop that advertised it had gluten-free food (Elaine is on a life-saving gluten free diet & I'm cutting down on my gluten intake), we grabbed a taxi over to Ribblehead.  We had reservations at the Station Inn there and found it was about a mile & a half from the Dales Way trail where it crossed Dent road at Far Gearstones (Don't you just love these names?) This was lonely country with not much in the way of habitation and it looked even bleaker on this dark rainy day.

The Station Inn is the only place for miles around and is close to the Northern railroad stop on the Leeds- Appleby line. The train appeared to stop several times a day and surprisingly, sizable groups of folks got on and off. After we checked in at the pub and got our two rooms set, the skies cleared a bit and we decided to take a walk over to the high, 24 arch Ribblehead railway viaduct that dominated the scenery. 

 
The old steam-powered Flying Scotsman train (built in 1923 for the London to Carlisle traffic) still makes its way through here during the summer season and when it does trundle over the viaduct, is a big hit with the antique railways crowd, who line the crossing to take pictures and compare historic thoughts about the grandeur of the Age of Steam.

After a nice two mile walk up to the abandoned Blea Moor rail station, we returned back to the Station Inn and had a nice dinner, chatting with fellow-walkers and bemoaning the weather, which promised to continue tomorrow as we crossed over the lonely Blea Moor on our 10 mile walk to Dent. But no, worries; I had my brand new super-light FroggTogs rainsuit and Joan her "never-failed" rain outfit, so rain? -who cares.

June 26 - On to Hubberholme!

Upon awakening in Kettlewell after a good night's sleep in the Blue Bell Inn, Joan & I went downstairs to the otherwise empty pub area and had our "becoming traditional" breakfast of yogurt, fruit, scrambled eggs with English bacon (more like what we Yanks know as "Canadian bacon") plus a good base of tea & coffee. Our friend & co-Team Turtle member Elaine Hopkins was due to arrive here after we leave today, meeting up with us two days hence in Ribblehead where we will all spend the night. This is little concerning since tomorrows walk is the longest of the trip (13 miles for us: 19 for Elaine) and the terrain is totally without cell phone or support services.

What is a Hubberholme, you might be asking? Good question and one that requires understanding that in the days when the years AD only had three digits, the north of England was ruled and largely populated by Viking invaders from the Norse (Scandinavian) countries. Many of the place names and indeed, family names today in Yorkshire and Cumbria are derived from those days. "Hubberholme" comes from a Norse phase meaning "Hunberg's Homestead", we are told by those who know about such things.

But off we go towards Hubberholme. Our six mile walk today is along the River Wharfe most of the way and we soon notice it must be prime fishing territory, since signs are tacked to the trees periodically stating that the fishing rights are owned by a local association and all others are forbidden to fish there. After a few miles of pastures, stone walls (with stiles & gates) and sheep by the score, we decide to jump off the trail for a break and walk up to the curiously named little village of Starbotton. The thought of a nice "cuppa tea" at the 400 year old Fox & Hounds Inn was tempting but alas, after walking over the bridge and up the narrow trail between two stone walls a quarter mile to the B6160 road through town, we find the Inn is closed on Monday! Worse, there is nothing else in this tiny town that's open to thirsty travelers.

So we slog back down to the river, cross over the bridge and continue up to Buckden, the next town about three miles further on. Just before we get there, we came upon a man fishing in the river and stopped to chat with him. Turned out he was a bailiff (now there's a word I've only heard in England!) hired by the private association to keep non-members off the fishing area and when I asked "Hows the fishing?", replies he had caught about forty trout. Incredulously, I wondered where they were, not seeing any big bags on his person and he laughed and told me this was a catch & release stream, as were most in England.

After walking into town, we find that there is only one place open for us, the  Buckden Village Restaurant. This turned out to be a great find, as we sat outdoors at a wooden picnic table overlooking the valley and enjoyed some good food, soft drinks and our mid-day 1/2 hour rest break (shoes off, stretch and re-apply Vaseline to tired feet). The tiny (and I mean really tiny) grocery store in the basement has nothing we sought (especially Cadbury's Milk Chocolate bars), so we headed back to the pathway for the final mile or so to Hubberholme.

We were booked into the George Inn, the only Inn in Hubberholme,  but since we had arrived so early (it was only a six mile walk), it was too soon to check in, so we waited around in the backyard courtyard, set up with tables and benches plus an outdoor grill. This old inn started off life in the 1600's as the vicarage house for the adjacent church but even afterwards has played a significant role; it's history is closely intertwined with church activities to this day, including the Hubberholme Parliament, an annual public action of haying rights to 16 acres of church owned land that takes place every year in the pub.  The Inn's co-owner, Ed Yarrow, was extremely helpful to us the next day, as our plans changed and we needed to find some local contacts to accommodate those changes.

After a great dinner at the Inn (steak & ale pie again for me), we walked over to the old church and wandered around. It's always open and has an intriguing  history. These ancient village churches are fascinating and so evocative of a simpler time, when life was localized and needs simpler. I sometimes ponder whether today's always inter-connected world of instantaneous information (usually about bad things) about everything, all the time, has diminished our ability to see and then wonder at life's simple everyday beauty.  One of the best parts of our doing the long walking journeys through parts of Europe that most people don't see (or if they do, it's at 65 miles an hour through a car window) is that the "Information button" is pushed OFF for a while. 

The church was quiet and restoring in it's antiquity. A quaint part of it's history is the story of the church mice. Seems that long ago, a bad flood in the valley fields drove the field mice to seek shelter in the higher ground of the churchyard & church itself. Although soon driven out when the waters receded, a local carpenter, Robert Thompson, set out to memorialize the event by carving a mouse into parts of the church furniture and fittings. There are 32 mice so carved; we found 12 of them. 

This one is carved into the leg of a chair. The old church is dark and its tough to spot them.

June 25 - Burnsall to Kettlewell

We awakened early in Barnsall after a good nights sleep at the Devonshire Fells Hotel and then headed downstairs for a early breakfast. We only had 10 miles to go today but the last half promised to be "interesting" since we will be walking for the first time on high open dales once we go through Grassington. After we left the little center of Burnsall, we walked right alongside the river and it was so peaceful and quite. Occasionally there was an "open & shut" gate, a kissing gate but mostly one of the those unique types of fence-crossings endemic to walking in England called a stile. 

Here's how a stile in Yorkshire works. One climbs carefully up a series of stones protruding a few inches from the stonewall face (perhaps steadying oneself by grabbing a wooden post placed strategically nearby) and upon reaching the top, either stand or sit on top, swing around and then carefully step down onto a similar series of protruding stones on the other side of the wall, eventually reaching the ground (which hopefully is not covered in stinging nettles!) Not too tough on a low wall; on a 7" monster like this one, it can be be both daunting and tiring.

But I digress. We made good progress and reached the town of Grassington around 11 AM, emerging into civilization smack in the middle of a ongoing bike event - The Tour of Yorkshire - and got ourselves a little turned around finding the town center. Joan wanted to buy a warm hat so we found a coffee shop on Main Street, right across from the Mad About Mountains shop. I had a latte, Joan her tea, we each drank lots of water and then bought a sandwich to take with us. The Scottie dog salt & pepper shakers on the table were worth a picture, so here it is: 

After making our way through the festival crowds on Main Street, and steadily climbing the gentle road-grade, we left the town behind and started up the big hill ahead. The grade wasn't too tough but it continued for a long time. We finally emerged high above town, into a vast area of high plains, broken by limestone stone walls and pathways trod into the grass. The wind started to pick up a bit and we occasionally ran into other walkers, most seemingly out for a nice Sunday walk. It was reminiscent of being on the high plains of Wyoming or Montana, since the horizon was the only boundary one saw in all directions. 

This high plains area looks deserted now, but there were Stone Age burial cairns and a long-buried medieval village remains near the current town of Grassington  We stopped for a quiet lunch next to an ancient burial site and only met one other walker while we were there.  The day was perfect for walking, maybe just nudging up to the lower limit of Joan's comfort zone but it was clear, with high mixed clouds and low 70's temp. We passed an 19th century lime kiln that had been used to make quicklime for fertilizer to spread on the plains; the limestone that forms these Dales makes for rich grasslands and good grazing. Even today, most of the pastures we walked through were covered with flocks of sheep.

We soon passed by a highly visible landmark, an height of limestone known as the "Coniston Pie", (Coniston is a nearby town) because of it's resemblance to a cake or piece of pie, and then a few miles on, started to head down off the dale towards our destination of Kettlewell. 

 

Now for my money, this little town is high in the running for "Most Photogenic Town". We followed the aptly named Maypole Lane right into the town center - and what was there but a maypole! 

We were staying at the Blue Bell Inn but as we approached, the sounds of 1950's music increased and when we turned the corner and started over the bridge towards the inn, there was a crowd of motorcyclists gathered around a big loudspeaker blasting "You'll Never Walk Alone" (??) out over the scene. Luckily (for us) the cyclists were leaving and the Sunday sing-along was just ending but it was a scare. One of the perils of staying in pubs is that the late night drinking crowd is usually just under your room and while last call is at 11 pm, "all out" is at midnight. That's tough when you're getting up at 7.

We ate at the Blue Bell (as we did at most pubs where we stayed) and I had my first authentic steak & ale pie of this trip. It is a tasty treat and after walking off more than a thousand calories during the day, it was well deserved. We even split a rich desert!

 

Time - once again - for the "Wabac machine" to do its stuff!

Well, we did it! As I write this on July 7th, we have completed our journey and walked more than 81 miles of the Dales Way from Ilkley to Bowness - on -Windemere, in sunshine &  rain, on the boggy almost-turf covered high windswept hills & alongside bubbling streams and rivers, passing through remote Yorkshire & Cumbria country towns that look as if they haven't left the 19th century. We walked through pastures of sheep with their new-born lambs (and dodged more forms of sheep poo than I knew existed), past big herds of impressively large dairy cows plus a few horses. We sometimes followed the path of the English Age of Steam and stood next to four massive stone railway viaducts that once carried the products of the area to Liverpool and the markets of the world. We did it in 7 days of walking, in an officially Augmented Team Turtle, as we have incorporated our dear friend and fellow Camino devotee Elaine Hopkins into the Team as an integral component. We cursed at missing or confusing trail markers & misleading maps, ate well at British pubs and fancy restaurants, walked as much as 15 miles a day and in general, had a wonderful time!

But what we couldn't do was post do our nightly blogs on this site because - simply put - we were in a Internet blackout zone most of the way and where we did have access, it was  painfully slow. I almost expected to hear the yowling screech of the old days on a dial-up 9.2 modem! Blogging was impossible but we all managed to add a few Facebook posts as we went, so parts of this may seem a little redundant to some of you. But stay with us - we'll try to bring up some new thoughts and observations about walking in the North of England, in this, our third year of when we celebrate America's Independence Day while we're in England!

But let's push the Wabac button and - whir, poof - we're back on June 23rd and we're just gotten off a Ryanair flight from Shannon airport in Ireland over the Irish Sea to Manchester in England. Thanks to great transportation planning, the train terminal is only a 10 minute walk (all indoors) built as part of the big Manchester airport complex. I bought my tickets online for the Pennine Express train to the Dales Way starting point in Ilkley; we have to change trains in Leeds (I'm surprised to learn that Leeds is the second largest railway station in England) so we found our way over to the far end of the terminal and got on a local train for the next 20 of so miles to Ilkley. It was a short walk to our inn for the night and we checked in at the bar for our room at the Dalesway Hotel. Our trans-Atlantic flight jet lag is over now, thanks to the prior four wonderful days we've spent in Ireland and today in Ilkley is clear and partly sunny. After a quick breakfast, we headed across the street and into the big town park next to the River Wharfe. We will be following this river system upstream for miles as we walk north. We are in high latitudes and since its only a few days since the summer solstice, the sun rose at 4:30 in the morning and will set about 10:30 at night.

The first five or six miles of our planned 14 mile walk today is flat and next to the river. We pass through wooded outlying residential areas and then long stretches where it seems to be only us on the trail. Soon we cross the boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and our way becomes a little more complicated, since the signage we'd been following - a signpost marked "Dales Way Footpath" or else a round yellow sticker pasted on a fence-post or stile with an bold arrow and words indicating it's for Dales Way - seem to change into more generic markings. Once we enter the Bolton Abbey area, with fields and fields between the road and the river, it become more a matter of using one's "walker sense" and less of following signage. Our Trailblazer guide book is helpful, since the author has walked the route and makes good notations on the maps, but still leaves us a little confused. But we'd planned on lunch here and so we walk over to the really up-scale & pricey Devonshire Arms hotel and then along the road to the Tea on the Green tea room for lunch.

After a great lunch of tea & scones plus splitting a ham & cheese sandwich, we headed past the ruined Bolton Abbey, crossed a bridge over the river and found our trail has melded into the just one of the multiple walking trails in this very popular park. After passing through the Cavendish Pavilion area (and enjoying a great "full Alistair" rest- shoes off, laying flat with feet up - for twenty minutes, we walked through the infamous Strid section of the river. This is an area where the river narrows between massive flat limestone layers of stone and entices people to think it's easy to jump the five to six foot width of the river. But it's not easy and should one fall into the fast-moving water, the deeply uncut walls will trap and hold the unfortunate person, usually resulting in drowning. 

Soon we got to Barden Bridge and found a ice cream van parked there, serving walkers with the tastiest ice cream we've had in a long time - Yorkshire's Best Ice Cream; I had raspberry cream and Joan had chocolate! Newly invigorated, we walked past Appletreewick (great name!) and soon found ourselves approaching Burnsall, the little town that was our destination for the night. We had booked at the Devonshire Fell Hotel (a sister facility of the Devonshire Arms) as a reward for our 14 mile first day and it was worth it! Joan loved the fluffy bathrobe awaiting her on the bed in our room and the food in the dining room was superb. Ah but such luxury was not to be continued, for most of the rest of the way we'll be staying in pubs or smaller inns. 

The Dales Way is described in our Trailblazer book as being one of the easiest long-distance trails in England, with "a wealth of signposts and superb maintenance of the trail-way". The author of the guidebook goes on to say that it can be done "with a baby in a pram" and that most of the walkers are "silver-haired" and inexperienced. As we got further into the walk, we found that this description was sometimes misleading and in fact, in a few locations, bordered on dangerously deceptive.