Wot, no online checkin?

Well, team "Grumbler's Stumblers" have all checked in for tomorrow's Oxfam Trailtrekker. The process wasnt perfect, but we got there in the end. Clearly, Oxfam isn't run by that disagreeable leprechaun that fashioned Ryanair out of his own greed and bile, otherwise there'd have been an online checkin, and we would have had to pay to check in at the event itself. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that the support team is carrying two bags for each of us. Patrick O'Bastard or whatever his name is would have charged us fifty quid each for that. So we're a couple of hundred quid up already. Plus, we only have to walk sixty miles tomorrow, which is less than if we'd caught a Ryanair plane to one of its city centre destinations.

We've had an exciting safety briefing, which has listed the number of places we need to feed, water, lubricate or strap up over the next twenty four hours. Unfortunately, as we were encouraged to applaud everyone who's had the slightest input to this event during the half hour presentation, I think i now have a stress fracture of the wrist.

We have also enjoyed the "pasta party". This was not, as you might suspect, an Italian political alternative to Silvio Bugngabungascone but rather an opportunity to carbohydrate load and hobnob with fellow Trekkers. A year ago, I simply wouldn't have eaten pasta, but then a year ago I wouldn't have done this walk either, so that's ok. I've trained myself to consume a foodstuff I previously consider to be a building material, but I'm still a bit fussy. I can't get over the feeling that I've just eaten a plate of boiled rawlplugs with mince on. Anyway there was a nice pint of beer served up by what appeared to be twin blonde barmaids, who, we learned, will also be at checkpoint three in the early hours of Sunday morning. Mrs Grumbler has nothing to fear, at that point, the only things I'll be remotely interested in are soup, ibuprofen, and possibly a distant bacon sandwich.

We will be taking pictures on the way round, and you can follow us live on the Trailtrekker pages here. Remember, Grumbler's Stumblers, Paul is 20a, Martin r is 20b, Martin b is 20c and Lancy is 20d.

Well tweet (#ttrek2012) if and when we can, but more blog early next week.

 

I climbed Everest, and then some...

Here's the route we walked over the fourteen days as tracked on the GPS:

We walked just over 200 miles, from start to finish, and crossing three national parks - the Lakes, the Dales and the Moors.

Ordinarily, the highest point of the walk would be in the Lakes, on Kidsty Pike, but we detoured on that stretch, as there were very low clouds - so our high point was at the Nine Standards Rigg, 650m high (2132 feet).

That's not to say we didn't climb a fair bit, drop a little, climb some more... Over the whole route, that added up to nearly eleven hundred metres of climb - or thirty six thousand feet.  Just for the record, that's one Everest, and then another four or five Empire State Buildings. Its just possible that's why my feet hurt!

Day 14 - They think its all over!

Our final day on the Coast to Coast, just like the first one, started with the promise of rain but finished in pleasant sunshine. A hearty breakfast at Intake Farm where we spent the previous night set us on our way for a relatively short 12 mile trip, but with greatly varied scenery.

A climb up a steep muddy track alongside a beck brought us to the "Hermitage", an enormous hollowed-out boulder (with carved date suggesting this was completed in 1790), where Mike treated me to a passable imitation of a grumpy hermit.

Now Mike has set some cracking paces at times, which have had me at a mere six foot one and a half (in the mornings) frequently skipping to catch up. Today, however, he'd clearly stepped up a gear.  I couldn't understand - we'd been enjoying the whole experience, was he really that keen to be finished? Then it dawned on me... I had promised him that Julia Bradbury (she of the walking TV programs) would be waiting for him at the walk's end, with a couple of Bath Buns taped to the sides of her head to replicate Princess Leia's Starwars hairdo. The poor fellow was hoping to have two fantasies fulfilled at once. My only chance of salvation was that at this rate, he'd be too knackered to kill me were we got there and he discovered the terrible truth of my lies.

During these past two weeks we'd both become quite skilled at bog-hoping - being able to traverse a man-eating peat-bog without so much as getting splashed.  Today we almost made it through the first bog as we crossed the moors, only for Mike to fill a boot about six feet from the road.  Karma had the last laugh, though - I got through the second bog only to step in a foot deep puddle on the path out.  This was not to be the last wet sock of the trip though!

Alternately clumping and squelching, we reached the very first road sign for our destination, where Phil caught us up.  Having started back in Grosmont, he'd overtaken three or four other sets of walkers so far. The man was clearly on a mission. He stayed with us a while, then stopped to wait for his son and two mates who were cycling the trail. Here I am at the sign, not posing at all.

The last few miles of Wainwright's route, just like the first few, are a cliff-top walk.  Anticipation builds as you round one headland after anther until finally, Robin Hood's Bay comes into view, and from here its downhill all the way to the North Sea, where tradition has us dip the toes of our boots in the sea, and fling the pebble we picked up back in St Bees.  If you've ever tried to dip a toe in the North Sea, you'll know that it often has other ideas. A series of really quite pathetic excuses for waves lures you further and further down to the water's edge until you've no hope of escape, at which point a mini Tsunami will fill your boots and, if you're particularly unlucky your trouser pockets too.  I dont (yet) have a picture of my calf deep soaking, but here's Ann and Phil getting theirs.


Ill make one or two more updates in this blog regarding the walk over the next few days.  A few anecdotes not mentioned elsewhere, maps, mileage, and links to more pictures on FLIKR....

Day 13 - Steamed

Having arrived at the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge early in the afternoon yesterday, and with a thirst on, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the title of today's post relates to the consumption of a great deal of ale, and indeed we had a few, but we weren't that far gone. Nor does this reference the fact that we left the pub this morning to find ourselves in the middle of a cloud. So read on...

In fact, there's not much I can tell you about the morning, as there wasn't anything we could see. To illustrate the point, here's a picture of Mike by the sign to the delightfully named and allegedly picturesque Great Fryupdale. I say allegedly because, as you will note, there's no way we could verify the fact.

So, before I describe the afternoon's much more successful walking, I'm going to digress, and tell you about something I learned last night in the pub. I was chatting to a bloke who claimed to be a Grouse Winder. Now I initially assumed, as you would, that this was local dialect for a gamekeeper, but it's not so! I wouldn't normally ply a chap with drink to ferret out his secrets, but it was Mike's turn to pay the bar bill, so I quickly abandoned my principles and got the fellow comprehensively trousered. This is what I learned:

Most people have probably never seen a grouse in the wild. In fact, if they've seen one anywhere other than on the front of a bottle of scotch, it's probably in the TV ad for the very same whisky, and they will have assumed that the bird in the ad in question has been very badly animated. Wrong. The grouse is, in reality, a badly animated bird. Well, "sort of" bird...

It turns out that in 1899, with hostilities escalating towards the second Boer war between the UK (and allies) and the Orange Free State, the Brits decided they needed a new and devastating secret weapon, the task of developing which was given to Major Tangible-Hairpiece of the Electric Light Brigade, who worked for several years with only the help of his assistant, Sergeant Merkin, of the same regiment. Their objective was to develop a bomb which could fly just above ground level, into the enemy forces front lines, before spontaneously exploding. The final fruit of their labours, cobbled together with the remains of a pheasant from the regimental kitchen, a hand grenade, and most of the inside of a cuckoo clock stolen from the junior officer's mess was the prototype of what we know today as the grouse.

That's right, the grouse is in fact a late Victorian example of a reanimated bionic bird. Unfortunately for Tangible-Hairpeice, his invention was too late to be used in the Boer war by a matter of days, and he eventually died penniless and unknown in Southern Austalia having fled the country in shame. However, this wasnt the end of the story for his creation, which was further refined over the years by a coalition between the league against cruel sports, the upper class twit association and the vegetarian society into what we know today as the modern grouse. A clockwork powered bird, which can fly at no more than three feet high, for twenty five metres or so, all the while making a ludicrous noise, before finally exploding. Its unique niche applications being in providing something that herbivores can shoot at without damaging their consciences, and which upper class twits can claim to have bagged despite the fact that, as shootists, most of them couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo.

The grouse winder, then, has the task of regularly ensuring that the birds are fully wound up and, on and after August 12th, that they are properly armed and will explode in a satisfactory manor whenever someone so much as looks at them.

To get back to the walking, it's fair to say that by the time we had covered ten miles and sought shelter in the Cafe in Glaisdale, we were wetter that an Essex girl's T-shirt on a club 18-30 holiday. Fortunately, after several pots of tea and some excellent pork pies the three of us (we were accompanied for most of today by Phil) were a little drier, and ready to hit the road again under cleared skies.

A highlight for me today was the station at Grosmont, which is under the care of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (used as the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films). Our arrival being timed so well that we saw two trains! A final trek uphill to the moors has brought us to tonight's stop, at Intake farm in Littlebeck, leaving us twelve miles tomorrow to the finish of our walk, and a well deserved celebratory ice cream!

 

 

Day 12 - Not "On the Busses"

 

On looking out of the window this morning, the clouds from yesterday were a lot higher, and we could see the ridge that we'd walked to get here. Blimey. And indeed Gosh. The picture to the left doesn't quite do it justice, but it'll give you an idea. High moors, heather, and more ups and downs than a week's plot line on Eastenders.

Grouse, too, and I don't mean from the Grumbler either. The little bird from the whisky bottles is by far the most prevalent bird on these moors. You can't walk more than a minute or two without one of the little buggers exploding out of the ground cover and whizzing, no more than three feet high, like a squawking clockwork dervish shouting it's hoarse cry of "Go Way,Go Way!". Most of the time, it's not a problem, but every now and then one will appear right next to you, just when you're contemplating the scenery. I don't scare easily, but at least one of these wee beasties has startled me almost enough to be grateful I have more than one pair of walking trousers.

The hotel we stayed in last night offered us a lift to the point we left the trail to walk down to Great Broughton, but that would have meant jumping straight out of the car into the first (and only) climb of the day, so we politely refused. When this epic journey finishes (barring disasters in the last two days) we are determined to have been from one side of the country to the other on foot, and without having used any other transport. No more than two minutes out of the hotel we ran into Phil, with whom we walked all of today's stage. He seems to be in exactly the same kind of luddite frame of mind. It's a nice feature of the walk that we keep running into others that we have seen on and off throughout the adventure.

The curtain of cloud was most definitely following us, lending weight to my thoughts yesterday that some Tolkeinish wizard is watching with evil intent, but we managed to get as far as the OS trig point on Urra moor before it caught up with us. Phil has been walking this on his own while his dad meets him at various points with fresh clothes and provisions. Today, Phil's son, and a couple of mates are setting out from St Bees to ride the three day bike version of the coast to coast, and his missus and others are already waiting in Whitby (nearby Goth capital of the world!) so there's gonna be quite a family get together when they meet on the East coast. He was kind enough to take the picture here.

Not much to say about the rest of the walk, another misty tramp across the moors as far as Blakey ridge. As an avid watcher of the sixties/seventies tv show "On the Busses" I'd been hoping that we'd be greeted by a miserably inept bus inspector, but it was not to be. However, as soon as we walked into the Lion Inn, which is the only place to stay for miles, we were greeted by at least six other people on the walk. So tonight promises to be a pleasant evening.

Seventeen miles to Littlebeck tomorrow, and a good chance of rain. Internet willing, there will be another moistened missive at the end of the day.

 

Day 11 - The Touch of Middle Earth

This morning, at breakfast, we were introduced to the Park House B&B's resident cockerel, Alan. He's named after Alan Carr, partly because when he originally arrived he wanted nothing to do with the hens, was suspected of "batting for the other side" and harbouring a liking for quiche and flower arranging. Very soon after being released into the wilds of the garden he decided to bugger off into the woods, and wasn't seen for a couple of days, after which he came back with a dramatically different personality, and has been cock o' the roost ever since. That's one of the reasons that while I say "introduced" there was a good glass window between us. The other reason was that Mike and I were both chained to the breakfast table by a couple of good old fashioned doorstep bacon and egg sandwiches.

 

Soon it was time for us to follow in Alan's footsteps, and bugger off into the woods which, inevitably, meant an uphill slog for a while. Surprisingly, my legs felt pretty fresh, and we gained height pretty quickly until we were actually in the clouds, where we stayed for most of the rest of the day. Mike's day was set fair when his GPS beeped to signal a geocache location, and with a triumphant smile he unearthed a small Tupperware box containing what looked like a pencil, a notebook, and half a dozen toy soldiers.

 

Many ups and downs, and a side trip to a cafe which turned out to be closed, later, we got to the top of Cringle moor, where you can find Alex Falconer's seat, a stone bench and map at a viewpoint from which you can see as far as the North Sea, our final destination. Or at least you could, if the visibility was better that twenty feet. There were times, when all I could see was a thin track, with burned heather either side, with ghostly, ice cold fingers of cloud worming their way under any layers of clothing, that I though maybe "Yorkshire Moors" was a misprint, and that second word should be "Mordor", it was that similar to a scene from the Lord of the Rings.

 

And so, eventually, to Great Broughton, where I'm tapping this out in the company of a pint of Black Sheep, with a burger comfortable stashed away as fuel for the morning and our penultimate climb on this journey from west to east coasts. Internet access willing, there will be more tomorrow.

 

Day 10 - The Long March

A thirty seven kilometre trek today, about which the cantankerous old Wainwright had little good to say. However, while he may have inspired this walk, we neither have to stick slavishly to is fictions, nor believe what he says about the points of interest on the way. So we didn't.

 

Straight out of Richmond this morning we deviated from the path, forsaking the advertised boggy footpaths for a pleasant stroll along a track by the Swale to the ruins of Easby Abbey. There seems to be a little more of this abbey ruin left standing than many others I've seen. Of course, the Tudor fatboy's thugs did a comprehensive job of knocking things down, and Henry Viii personally ordered the monks there to be hanged, in retaliation for them having supported the "Pilgrimage of Grace", a northern led protest/rebellion over the split from the Catholic church. Other abbey ruins have been comprehensively plundered by the locals who were encouraged to view them as a kind of "free quarry", but the monks of Easby were kind to and popular with the locals, so I wonder if what remained standing of the abbey was left alone out of some kind of respect.

 

The next twenty or so miles consisted mostly of road and path walking through and alongside field after field of oilseed and other crops. Part way along, we said goodbye to the Swale, which has been our Guide and companion for the last few days.

Geographically, today was not very interesting - in fact the sameness of it all made it seem a much longer walk than it was, which was a bit dispiriting. What we did get, though, was a nice little village pub stop for lunch at Danby Wiske, and quite a bit of wildlife to ogle, including yellowhammers, hares, linnets as well as the usual cows and sheep. Still no pigs, though. I am a little worried about Mike, though. Between you and me, I think he might be losing it. Sometime around mid afternoon, he stopped, pointed and excitedly cried "look, a sparrowhawk!" doubtless shocked at being thus identified, the bird concerned revealed its true identity by denying Mikes statement with a mighty and resounding "QUACK!".

Tired and weary (or given my drugs for toothache intake, maybe that should be wired and teary) we arrived at tonight's B&B, Park House, just a mile or so beyond Ingleby Cross. We've generally been lucky with our accommodation, and this one was a gem, the owners Mike and Beverley greeting us with a glass of bubbly before showing us round their place, which is really dedicated to walkers. Since its quite a trek to the nearest pub, they fed us, too, and you won't hear any complaints from this direction regarding either the quality or quantity (no wonder the table is so sturdy) of the repast.

 

My tooth still hurts.