"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.
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