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Time: 8.25h. Up: 535m. Down 630m.
Distance: 32km. Difficulty: easy but long Day 6: Shap (265m) to Kirkby Stephen (170m) We are up and away by 7:45 because we have a very long day in front of us… at 32km (22 miles) distance-wise the second-longest of the trip. And it turns out to be as long as expected and quite uneventful. After crossing a bridge over the busy M6, the farmland soon gives way to the wide and desolate moors of Crosby Ravensworth, where the only moving things are the ubiquitous sheep, and the curlews swooping above the heather with mournful cries. Around midday we move back into an area of farmland near Orton and stop to have lunch in a field across a lane from an ancient stone circle. Continuing onwards we come to beautiful and isolated Smardale, where Sally sees a solitary house and immediately falls in love with it. She says that she would like it as a present for this birthday and this Christmas and in fact she would be happy to give up all future birthday and Christmas presents in exchange for the house. I hope she gets her wish some day. The events of the day blur in memory as I write this. At some point I remember pointing to white sheep marked with two slashes of red paint and saying that they looked very like the paint signs (two red bars around a white one) used on mountain paths in the Alps and postulating that this was how the English signposted their paths and that because the sheep were always moving, that’s why there were no good paths and also why people always get lost on the moors. At another point we saw a flock of sheep that had been marked with green paint and I said to my father that it made me think of an old English song and I started to bleat my way through Greensleaves…. I must have been far gone to encourage him like that. Later we slump down for a rest in a field that has played host to many sheep (what a surprise) and observe that one is truly a hiker when one regards cart ruts as an acceptable place to sit, and it no longer bothers one to stretch out among and on top of sheep droppings. Dad even takes a short nap on them. And I remember we went through a large field with a number of cows and a massively muscled bull and Sally asked me what I would do if it charged and I couldn’t run away in time, and I said I’d practice my bull-fighting moves because after all what else was there to do? And eventually we came down out of another region of moors into the lovely Eden Vale and walked into the market town of Kirkby Stephen. Another fine dinner and an early night and then – blessed be the schedule !! – a day of rest awaited us. And more than that, we neither needed nor wanted. We were all very tired. It was time for a break. Summary:
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C2C: The Coast to Coast Hike