Soldiering On

Day 10: Reeth to Richmond
Miles today: 14.42
Total mileage: 130.81

Once again Jim and I thought we would have an easy day but it ended up being a challenge. Right as we were leaving Reeth we ran into Stuart, a guy who had been fishing that morning in the River Swale.  He showed us the brown trout he'd caught, then showed us pictures of some of his prior catches.

When we told him we were headed to Richmond he told us there were two ways to get there, one along the river and the other up along the hills. He said if it were him he'd go along the river on such a nice day. He told us we'd be in Richmond by 1 pm, suggested a restaurant there, and we parted ways.

We debated going the river route but with our navigational issues we were hesitant to deviate from our instructions and maps. What a mistake. Sometimes following Wainwright's path is like a Family Circus cartoon. You go up, around and over instead of taking a direct path. Several times we've walked for miles only to cross a road and see a sign for the town we just left only a couple or so miles away! We had walked almost nine miles from Reeth when we saw this one:

The terrain is getting flatter though, since we crossed the Pennines, and while we're still climbing hills they aren't as high as ones earlier in the trip.

A good part of the walk now is on permissive paths through pastures. You always have to make sure you're on the correct side of the fence so you don't walk through a huge field only to find out there's no gate or stile to get out. That happened to us today. Then when I went up to a stone fence to see if it was low enough to climb over, I walked into a nettle bush and my legs burned like crazy for awhile. Like I've said before, each day brings new danger.

We're so grateful for our GPS though. I downloaded the OS (Ordnance Survey) map and have the C2C overlay so we can pinpoint within about a foot if we've gone off track. It is amazing, but you have to check it constantly (which slows you down-- a lot!).

The other thing we dealt with today was cows. Mostly we've been walking through sheep pastures until now. There were lots of cows today, though and we had to be very careful not to get between a mama and her calf.

Along the way we saw beautiful vistas like this:

and this:

We even saw this:

It's a little adder snake sunning himself on a rock.  The guidebook says you will be lucky to see an adder in England, so I guess we're just lucky!

We trudged along and finally saw Richmond Castle in the distance around 3 pm. About a half hour later we had descended the big hill and walked into Richmond, the biggest city on the whole C2C--about 8,000 people!