Contact — Penelope Janu

It is around 30 degrees in Richmond today. Lots of English people are taking advantage of the warm weather by sitting in the sun and going increasingly pink.

We walkers are still focussed on walking….we were advised by our Dutch friends that storms are forecast for tomorrow (on our 33km hike to Ingleby Arncliffe). This means that poles may be a problem (in terms of them becoming lightning rods). What to do? Butterscotch Keeper and Coconut Milk are particularly attached to their poles. They have the pole equivalents of Harry Potter's Thunderbolt 1,000. Meaning their poles are constructed from finely tempered lightweight titanium. They are fitted with shock absorbers, reflector clips, state of the art grips and bionic tips (not that any of these things are going to be of any use at all should lightning strike).

We will leave the Yorkshire Dales early tomorrow morning, and by tomorrow evening we'll be on the fringes of the North York Moors. Ingleby Arncliffe has a pub (likely to become an increasingly important focus as the kilometre count increases). Happily there is also a stop on the way, the attractively named Danby Wiske. Leading me to another note of advice to other walkers (touched on earlier with reference to shops).

Places to stop on the way

The Coast to Coast walk is not a walk. It is, in fact, a hike. On only a handful of occasions in nine days of walking have we come across a tea room or shop that is directly on the route (and believe me, the route is long enough without going off it). One very welcome stop was on the way to Keld. After traversing the bog we had tea and a scone at a farmhouse. En route to Reeth there was a tea room, but other walkers had found it before us. So….

Only Butterscotch Keeper got a fruit scone. The rest of us watched on helplessly (and ultimately, fruitlessly), waiting to be served. Not that everything went Butterscotch's way: an American woman (with a bottom the width of a Yorkshire Barn) sat on his table (literally) and sighed (in a 'let's let it all hang out' sort of way). He was horrified. We all had to walk very quickly until he'd cooled down.

If there really are thousands of walkers on this route, we haven't seen them...

A simple stile (breathe in and hoist that pack!)

Mostly the route, besides our own little group, is deserted. And so far as road (in a tarmac sense) goes, there continues to be very little of it. Sometimes there are no roads at all. At other times there may be a stretch of a kilometre or two. Tomorrow's route was one in which (a few years ago) there was an element of road walking, but public access ways have opened up in the last few years so we will be up and down the stiles as usual. The photo depicts one of the narrower stiles. Some have little gates with deadly springs!

And just a couple of photos to finish. The first depicts the Ladies Bathroom at the Black Bull Hotel in Reeth. Please note the sign that is stuck to the left hand side of the mirror (the mirror is directly outside the cubicle).

Please feel free to use these toiletries while you are here, but do not remove them...We do have CCTV footage in place! Thank you!

Any visitor to the Ladies Bathroom is at risk of whiplash as soon as they read the sign. Where - exactly - does the CCTV camera point?

Apparently the Gentleman's Bathroom has a large jar of boiled sweets near the sinks (hopefully the sweets are individually wrapped).

Finally from Richmond, a Shire Horse who missed an earlier posting.