Distance: 17 (Tot: 177)
Fitbit steps: 39000
Weather: morning - mainly sunny, sometimes hazy; afternoon - increasingly cloudy
Number of slugs I carried in the inner tent all day: 1 (what was it doing inside to start with?!)
I take back anything good I said about Lower Warrendale farm last night. It stayed in my favour until 1.26am, when their dog started barking. The dog then barked persistently, patrolling up and down the track outside our thin layer of nylon, until just after 4am. Every now and then it would shut up for a few minutes (usually when one of us yelled at it), but no lull lasted long.
At 4am, peace finally reigned again and off I dropped. I was just mid-dream (featuring storming into the farmhouse bedroom and shaking the occupants away whilst ranting at full-pitch about their dog barking) when the bloody mutt started up again.
At 5am I said we may as well get up. At least then we would arrive at our destination early and could sleep. Mick pleaded for a bit longer under the duvet, and we got up just as it was getting light at half past.
It's not a bad time of day to be out and about when it's such a fine day, and even if it was a touch chilly, we soon warmed up with the hills which presented themselves in front of us.
It was another day in glorious, green, rolling surroundings, which always look at their best under a blue sky, and whilst it wasn't wall-to-wall sunshine today, this morning there was plenty of blue around.
Our biggest focus of the day was food. Second breakfast was a meagre affair, as was elevenses (which was accompanied by the barking of three farm dogs which ran the entire length of a large field to bark at us; it must be the day for it), and by noon I was ready to eat a scabby dog.
We'd already had forewarning that the pub in Leavening wouldn't be open at lunchtime (thank you Louise), and so it wasn't, as hadn't been the pub in Acklam. However, having scrutinised the map I decided that the pub in Kirkham would be. It's relatively near a busy road, and there are no houses nearby, which suggested to me that it survives from lunchtime passing trade.
It was open, but we didn't go in. We weren't daft enough to pass by the pub in Westow, two miles previously, when we smelt food upon our approach. Very nice it was too.
That left us with just under 3 miles left for the afternoon session, although we added to the distance slightly by abiding by a closure notice at level crossing (another theme of this walk) as it wasn't too long a backtrack to go via a legal (and safe) route.
After a stroll through some woods, one final pull up a hill saw us to our night-stop.
Tomorrow we have many things to which to look forward including Castle Howard and a replenishing of the chocolate stocks. I'd give my right walking pole for a bar of chocolate (or a fudge brownie) right now.
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That was fortunate!
ReplyDeleteNot the dog. That must have been extremely irritating. All of them.
But a dry day, that must have been nice.
You should have put in a brownie SOS, I'd have popped over. Sadly too late now...
ReplyDeleteNext rain will be Sat am, with just a few showers next week, so pretty clement really.
Hope you find some chocolate...