Distance: 14.5 miles
Weather: mostly sunny, bit chilly at times, breezy
After a good night's sleep in very comfortable beds (no dreams about crawling along stony paths last night) we were well breakfasted and set off just after half past nine. Today was a 'short' day, so there was no rush to be away.
The hostel is right on the edge of town, and we were out the door and headed up through sheep fields (with rough fells, swaledales and some white generic sheep I don't recognise) with plenty of pheasants running about, and soon into a wood that started off very prettily with bluebells and primroses, and ended up as a rusty farmyard machinery graveyard. Coming out of the woods, we turned up a track, where there was some squeaky rodent-like rustling (definitely not coming from my rucksack) in the verge. The path led along the edge of the woodland, and through the yard of a tumbledown farm that was straight out of Balder's Gate. A buzzard was seen circling overhead. At the fork in the track, we took Low Tun Way down into Riccal Dale, carpetted in bluebells. In a clearing by the stream, there were some people standing in a tiny shed with a massive fire lit, we said hello but didn't ask them what they were doing. Leading up the other side of the valley through woodland, we met and chatted with some walkers out for the day.
Emerging from the trees, we met Beadlam Rigg which is a very long, very straight road that goes by three imaginatively named farms, Low Farm, Middle Farm and High Farm. We joined between Low and Middle and headed up. After the farms, there is a gate leading on to heather moorland and we stopped at the top by a trig point for some lunch with fine views over the valley and we could pick out the route of the path over the next section of walk. We had a fly-by of three jet fighters, which Rob then tried to identify. Sadly, they weren't F111 Attack Aardvarks, more probably F15s or F22 Raptors (maybe, apparently, I don't know - ask me about sheep and flowers...)
Todays walk was mostly woods and fields, which have all merged into a big woody fieldy walk. There was a big house with fancy gardens that was pretty but looked out of place, an amusingly stuck lorry on a tiny narrow track that some fed up chaps were trying to dig out, a bench we didn't have a sit on, this was later regretted and later on I ended up just sitting down in the middle of the path, there was a scruffy farm that had a BnB sign which seriously you don't want to stay at - there probably is some thing nasty in the woodshed there. An alarmingly orange stream. A deer! (I managed to get a photo of its bum.) A squirrel! Some confusing paths! Aching feet! Biscuits!
The walk along the valley towards Hutton-le-Hole goes along the River Dove which is famed for its wild daffodils. We are doing our walk about two weeks too late to see these in flower, but we did get to enjoy the bluebells.
To avoid a bit of road walking, we detoured from the N of E Way guidebook, and headed up and round, rather than taking the moorland road into town, this was a bit more hilly but soft grassy paths through a bunny city.
We are staying at the Barn Teashop and Hotel in Hutton-le-Hole and are now having burgers and chips, with a couple of pints of Black Sheep in The Crown pub next door.
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