Day 18 - Dipping, pebbling, & tossing

A good night's sleep, Advil, a hearty breakfast are great cure-alls for the footsore walker.

After this and that and the other thing, Mary, Frank, Tom, and I headed down the steep and winding (what else?) path from our B&B to the beach. Only Tom, Frank, and I didn't want to put our stinky and wet boots back on. Mary put her boots on and agreed to be proxy for all of us. Tom and I remembered our pebbles, Frank never got one, Mary forgot hers in her suitcase. While I think our team was more organized than this would lead you to believe, we are satisfied that this will cover the bases for all of us.



























Tah-dah!













As tradition dictates, we stopped at Wainwright's Bar in The Bay Hotel for a pint and salute to our trip. We signed the register and, to our surprise, noticed that the day before a woman from Forest Grove, Oregon, had finished the walk.





This is a ritual we added. Earlier Mary had thrown away her shoes. Here Tom is throwing away his and mine. They were coming apart, no longer waterproof (if ever they were), scuffed, and the soles were worn. Sentimentality stayed our hand briefly, but practicality won out.




Frank is still trying to decide if our adventure was fun or not. It wasn't fun, but it was meaningful. It was a challenge we were proud to have met. The scenery counted for a lot, however. The walk would have been pointless without it. I feel sorry for the walkers I see hurrying by, on an insane 7-10 day schedule. We would have added about three more days to see some of the little towns in more depth, and to let our tired tootsies rest on occasion.

This was a good one; it was brilliant; we were knackered, yeah, but pushed on. Now have a packet of crisps and turn on the telly; "Britain's Got Talent" is on, dearie.

Day 17 - Egton Bridge to Robin Hood's Bay

Yippee, yippee, hooray, hooplah, happy dance, yay! We made it! We made it!

Sort of.

We started at 9:30 a.m. and arrived at Robin Hood's Bay at 7:00 p.m. Seventeen miles. But the trip is not over until you dip your boot in the bay and leave the pebble you have brought all the way from St. Bee's. We haven't done the boot and pebble bit yet. And this is why.

I drank a toast at dinner to Mary 's determination. She came down with a cold a couple days ago. It has steadily gotten worse, but Mary was determined (is there a word for extra-, super-determined) to finish the walk. The last five miles into Robin Hood's Bay were an absolute misery for her. She likened it to childbirth, only with red, screaming feet to show for it instead of a red, screaming baby. That's not much of an incentive. Our B&B was very close to where we entered Robin Hood's Bay, so we just stopped there, a few hundred feet short of what Stedman (our guidebook author) labels, "The End." We will do the official stuff tomorrow. Right now my feet are also red and screaming and I'm absolutely knackered, and I didn't even have a cold to contend with. I voted right along with everyone else to postpone.

This last walk encapsulated almost every environment we've come through over the last 17 days. The only thing missing were the fells of the Lake District, and I gladly will give a sampling of that a miss.

This is the righteous Horseshoe Hotel, home of Sunchaser and Falling Stone ales.














The little town of Grosmont was on the way, and we stopped to share in the spectacle of a steam locomotive pulling out of the train station.




We kept on a country road that eventually climbed into the moors. The contrast is always startling, the desolate moors and the lush valley, and the change is abrupt.





After the moors, we descended into another valley and a forest that reminded us all of Forest Park, except for the waterfall.




We had been tramping pretty steadily since we began, with a brief stop for lunch right before plunging into the forest. We were all feeling the weight of our packs and the mud on our shoes. We were about ten miles into our hike at this point. Cue Volga Boat Song.

When all of a sudden … another miracle. At a place in the forest the guidebook said was abandoned was Midge Hall, a newly opened TEA ROOM. The sun had been going in and out all day, and this was at an "outie" point. We sat on their lawn, ate delicious scones with cream, butter, and jam, and drank strong, revivifying tea. They listed a fairy cake, which none of us had ever tried, so we ordered one. "It's only a cupcake," the owner/waiter whispered to us. That's okay, we said, we've got to have one just because of the name. It was indeed a cupcake. Oh, well. Now we can say we've tried one. Their loo had a better view (over a burbling stream) than some of our B&Bs!

We all agreed later that this was a turning point for us. We now had enough energy to plug on.


We came out of the forest onto another country road and then onto another moor. This one was boggy. The map said "somewhat boggy" and "boggy." We would have labeled it, especially since it started to drizzle, "boggy" and "nastily boggy."

We were about a couple of miles from the sea, within sight of cars traveling on a coast road, when we hit the cruelest bog of all.

We had fairly dry shoes, the rain wasn't really a significant force, we had visions of a sunny walk down the coast, similar to the one we had when leaving St. Bee's. We were soooo close. Then we hit the bog to end all bogs. It was the kind of bog that sucked at boots, erasing all boot marks within five seconds. You never knew if you were stepping onto fairly solid ground or into a two-foot hole that would drain marshy, smelly water into your boots. People who had come before had tried to help. Planks from rotting duckboards had been placed forward to create a dry stepping spot. But let me remind you: You don't beat the bog; the bog always wins.




A sliver of the sea, tantalizingly, is in the background.







The rest of the walk was straightforward, and not without its charms.

On another country road, we came across a group of ducks, waddling up the lane, all in a row. (Why didn't they fly?) We followed at a respectful distance. Mother, father, two teenager ducks, and a doting uncle.





Just before we hit the path that would take us along the cliffside into Robin Hood's Bay, we descended THROUGH an asphalted trailer park. "Please be respectful of the residents," the sign said. Yes, ma'am.




Throughout the day, dark clouds would loom over us, only rarely spitting anything out, for which we were extremely grateful. As we hit the coast, this is the sight that greeted us.





But as so often has happened to us in the past, the weather dramatically turned around. We walked the rest of the way in sunshine, sporadically interrupted by light clouds. It was the walk we had hoped for.

Sort of.

Did I mention we were walking beside sheep pastures? A sheer drop to the water on one side, sheep pastures on the other. A farmer had just manured one of the fields closest to the trail and was working hell-bent-for-leather on another one further away, upwind of us. The delightful smell of grass after a rain was smothered, stifled, choked out, eradicated, and stomped on by the malodorous and pervasive smell of…manure. And the tiller had thrown clods of crap all over the trail. Dee-lightful.

About a half mile before we actually hit the border of Robin Hood's Bay, we passed into Nirvana. The manured field ended. The smell drifted to the north of us. The sun was shining. The sea was blue. We could finally see Robin Hood's Bay peeking out at us.






The thing in the middle is a "rocket pole." A rope was tied to the top, a rocket attached and launched toward a distressed ship at sea. The ship would tie its end of the rope to the ship, and a pulley system was used to pull shipwrecked sailors to land. Neat trick.











Welcome to Robin Hood's Bay. Our B&B was about a block and a half away. We headed for that immediately and collapsed. We roused ourselves briefly for dinner, then back to collapse.

Dipping, pebbling, and celebrating have been left until tomorrow.

Day 16 - Blakey to Egton Bridge

The trouble with a day that goes smoothly is there's nothing much to write about.

Okay, here's one story. At one point, Frank said, You lead. I promptly turned in the wrong direction. The others then said I could only lead them where they told me to go.

It was supposed to have been hot, about 85 degrees. The cool breeze saved us from being fried enroute. Plus we were high up in the moors again for most of the walk.

We finally descended to Glaisdale but only saw the outskirts. Two miles further on was Egton Bridge, where we were staying. It has the requisite English babbling brook. The luggage hadn't arrived when we stumbled in, so it was the perfect excuse to sit on the hotel's lawn, wiggle our toes in the grass, and have a glass of Sunburst ale, made in the Midlands. The sky was blue, the ale was good.

We're not even going to think about tomorrow's SEVENTEEN-mile walk into Robin Hood's Bay.




Saying goodbye to friends we met along the way.













That white spot is a dog, and he found one way to cool off: plunge into an algae-filled pond.









We were way up on the moors, but we could see the lush valley below.













No, we are not cheating by taking a train. Just resting.







The Beggar's Bridge story: A young man and woman could not marry, because he was too poor. He went one way off the bridge to seek his fortune; she went the other to wait for him. He came back. They got married. I said, Humph, where's the comedy, where's the tragedy? Frank said, "They got married, didn’t' they?" Good point.