Let me first start with this picture of Mary walking through a fenced pasture. It was so cold and wet yesterday that I didn’t take any pictures. I just wanted to get to where we were going.
So this is a pasture just like the ten or eleven we went through in the rain and cold. Pasture after pasture after pasture …
What you don’t see in this picture (and I will spare you) are the cow patties and sheep plops, the churned up mud and grass, and the rabbit holes just the right size to step into and twist an ankle.
This is the actual start to our day. Less than five minutes walk from our B&B was the 1/3 point of our trip. It is an overpass of a Virgin bullet train track. (The irony is too intense.) We wanted to memorialize this occasion. Especially given what we now know, we really wanted to congratulate ourselves for lasting as long as we have. Instead what we memorialized was a moment so typical of how we start our day.
Less than five minutes into our day’s hike, we are applying blister packs (F&M), taking off clothes (Tom), putting on clothes (Jonathan), and taking pictures (me).
We never did take the triumphant group shot.
Is it raining? Why, yes, it is. When we woke around 7:00, the sky was blue and it was warm. When we had breakfast at 8:30, it was beginning to cloud over, but there was more blue sky than not. By the time we left at 10:00, it was raining and the temperature had dropped. A few minutes after the bridge shot was taken, stinging rain and wind blasts hit us in the face.
Why do people walk mostly from west to east on the C2C walk? Primarily because the wind is at your back. Off and on throughout this day the wind hit us in the face. In other words, my friends, the wind was not at our backs. It was most definitely in our faces.
Fortunately, it was mostly light drizzle and occasional wind gusts that hit us. The walk was the gentlest and shortest of the last few days. I’ll give you the punch line for the day right here: we arrived only slightly soggy, in good spirits, with almost all parts in working condition. Everyone told us it would be an easy day, and it actually was.
This is a Virgin bullet train. I know you can’t see it. By the time I got my camera up, the train had whizzed by.
I was so focused on climbing up the stile -- I’m well trained at this point -- that I didn’t notice that I could have just walked around it. Tom is demonstrating.
We traveled along the moors and noticed “cairn circle” on the map. Tom and I trudged to the spot and found a vague stone circle. Nothing mystical happened; no pot of gold appeared, Tom wasn’t beamed up, his astigmatism hasn’t been cured.
The picture on the left is of one of the few plants that will grow on the forbidding moor. Of course it is a forbidding, prickly plant.
It was very windy on the moor. Jonathan found a hole, one of several scattered across the moor. Frank says no one knows who or what created it. It was ideal for hiding from the wind to have our lunch. We felt like rabbits. Mary told us about the asps that live out there. It was a short lunch.
As we got closer to Orton -- subject of many jokes, including ‘Orton ‘ears a ‘oo -- the weather got a little better. We could see meadow flowers in the sunlight. We caught a glimpse of the rare moor orchid. We rambled along a babbling brook. Birds were singing. This is what we had hoped the walk across England would be like. If we have to pay for this moment by scaling vertiginous fells, then that is what we have to do.
And so, in short order, under threatening skies, we found The George Hotel, had a pint of Cumberland Ale (me) and Guinness (Tom and Jonathan), and listened to the rain begin to fall -- outside.
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