Another delightful day in the Dales

Had a great sleep nice bed/sheets, had a nice bfast, cooked to order, April got the porridge (oatmeal) and I had the standard english bfast. We chatted with the other folks at the B+B, they were from Vashon island in Washington. We've biked there a few times. Had a discussion with one of the women about Tunisia, she had lived there and we had visited while we were in the peace corps. Anyway enough with the chitchat and away we went at 9:00.

Remember yesterday I got the smirky look from April so we decided she was in charge today. Let's see how she handles the pressure of team leadership!

Here's where the "delightful" in the blog title comes from (at least for me). Right away April takes the wrong turn from the B+B. We headed up the street for about 50 yards before I suggested we should be down in the village. At that point I couldn't have been happier! I tried to mimic her look from yesterday, but clearly I wasn't as practised as she was.

Our route followed the river thru a beautiful dale. We had 14 miles to do today, and it was pretty easy walking except for the freaking gates and stiles. I'll bet we passed thru at least 60-80 gates/stiles. We started out really admiring all the beautiful stones walls but by gate 50 we were rather tired of the whole thing.

On these gates....

They built narrow passages into the stone walls (you had to turn sideways to get thru), and they have a little wooden door usually on a spring that you have to open to get thru the narrow passage.Then there are the "step-overs", two boards/steps straddling the fence, supported on both ends (like the letter n), one higher than the other, so step up, up again, then down twice. And there are gates small and large. Overall it gets tiring and slows you down.

So the route connected with the road for a short bit, and we're walking along, and boom April twists her foot in a tiny depression and falls right down in the road. It looked like she really twisted her ankle, I immediately thought it was going to be sprained but it turns out she was no worse for the wear. Probably another big bruise on her ass. Readers you needn't feel too sorry for her as she has a habit of falling on flat stretches on many of our previous hikes. Once we realized she was ok I broached the topic of her cracking under the pressure of the leadership mantle. You can imagine she wasn't too happy with that.

Anyway we're walking along in a nice grassy section and boom she falls again. What the hell! Cracking under pressure! Again we had a good laugh.

Then as we walked thru the next village and she tried to go down a wrong road. Sigh, I gently steered her back on track. Like I said, it was a delighful day. And btw - I expect we'll have a comment from April towards the end of the day.

So we crossed a bridge and had to backtrack to a quant litte town called Muker for lunch. Supposedly this is one of James Herriots favorite towns. This is the English veterinarian who authored a bunch of cute little books about the english and animals.

Had a nice one hour lunch, April had the steak pie and I had venison stew, chips with both, awesome in the gravy. I also had a beer. Then as you might expect we both wanted to sleep. But we had about 3 miles left. So we slogged our way up over a hill and down to Keld by 3:30.

There's nothing in these little towns but again we got a great B+B, with a bar and a dining room. Showered, then we tried to nap to let our bodies recover. Got woken up by the oil delivery guy outside our window. Just got back from dinner, April had banana curry soup, and I had poached haddock with vegies. Both quite nice. Chatted up some hikers about the route tomorrow, which goes up on some moors.

We have a choice of three routes, they're so boggy they try to rotate the hikers during different seasons. Earlier folks had told us to take the winter route (less bogs). But today's batch of hikers seem to have come over the blue route, which is the standard for Aug-Nov. One women said her hiking pole sunk up to the handle at one point. Now that's a wet bog.

No matter what we're going to get wet boots. And we'll pass a set of rocks called the "nine standard". These mark the divide betwene the North Sea and the Irish sea. After the nine standards all the water flows west to the Irish sea. We also will overlap with the Pennine way for a short bit.

I gotta go. I think I'll massage April's feet, as well as ego!

April says she too sore to comment.