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Our B&B spot last night was great across the board. We were welcomed with tea and cakes then hooked up with a fab spot for dinner.

The Manor House B&B is a huge old two story house in the centre of Kirkby Stephen. Our room had a small ensuite power shower which rocked after a long day on the trails.

For dinner we went to The Croft House B&B and restaurant. Dinner was outstanding with lovely decor, service and food. The mushroom soup was the best I’ve ever tasted!

Our walk today was the easiest day so far with 17 miles along mostly flat trails. Unlike other days the views today were limited as our paths were surrounded by trees and hedgerows.

About 1/2 way through the hike we passed Warcop, a small village which hosts a British Army urban warfare training area. There were lots of machine gun sounds and the occasional BIG bang (with impressive smoke) as we hiked throught out afternoon.

As we entered woodland trails we were rewarded with beautiful fields of bluebells lining the trails.

The trails seemed long today so we entertained ourselves with our very own Olypic hurdle event over the many many stiles. For a foreigner Lynn showed good promise but lost out to the creative talents of yours truly with my signature ‘double hip rotation jump’.

The last few miles into Appleby followed the riverbank and we saw lots of large brown trout munching on bugs.

Tonight we’re staying in the Royaloak Hotel, a 16th century coaching house. We ate dinner here tonight and it was lovely washed down with local Blacksheep ale.

We took a short walk around Appleby – it’s a small town with a castle which is unfortunately closed to the public. The local architecture is old with lots of character.

Today’s mileage was 17 miles making a total of 81 miles. It was much cooler today with overcast skies and almost rain. The forecast for tomorrow looks dodgy with 60% chance of rain. That’s unfortunate but should be a good field test for our Paramor jackets.

Tomorrow is our last day with the longest mileage at 19 miles to round it out to an even 100 miles.

Didn’t sleep too well last night – it was hot, our room (facing the main street in Hawes was loud) and the bed was tiny. We got up early again and had cereal and toast (marmite yes!) before hitting the trail.

Today the first few hours were slow with lots of map navigation needed to find the right trail. I’ve been using my Iphone as a GPS device and love the new MemoryMap software. For about 10 quid (pounds to my Anerican friends) I was able to load all the 1:50K maps for our route. I use the GPS when we want to doublecheck our location and use the excellent OS landranger maps (1:25K) for everything else.

The weather was cooler today in the low 60F’s making it a great day for our long trek to Kirby Stephen. Not too much to mention today – lots more sheep and birds. We also spotted our first Romany Gypsy caravan heading for the great Appleby Gypsy horse gathering next week.

We also passed Pendragon Castle home of Uther father of King Arthur. We saw another border collie working sheep called Mac. We stopped to talk to the farmer for a while too.

Tonight we’re staying at Manor House B&B. We had a lovely welcome from Jean the owner who made us tea and cakes as soon as we arrived. We have dinner plans in the village at a local restaurant. They aren’t licensed for booze so you bring your own! Should be fun.

Total distance today was 18.5 miles making a total of 64.5 miles. We hiked for 9 hours with 1 1/2 hrs for snacks and lunch. Tomorrow we head to Appleby 17 miles away.

We are enjoying the hike though Lynn has started with some blisters (7 and counting) 🙁

We had a lovely dinner last night in Buckden at the Village Store Restaurant. Their tagline is ‘where the locals eat’ which gave me flashbacks if little Britain. The food was excellent Nd the host Gordon very colorful and fun.

After dinner we walked down to the river and saw two border collies riding on a quad bike driven by the farmer. We watched them gather sheep and move them into another field.

We were up early and on the road by 7:15. Given the heat of yesterday we wanted to bang out the first 10 miles (with all the climbing) before noon. The walking today was lovely with outstanding valley views and lots more wildlife. Lots more birds too keeping us company throughout the day.

As we hiked up Hells Gap (aptly named) we saw another shepard working a huge flock with one border collie. It was amazing to watch as the sheep were pushed towards and past us. What a treat! Lynn has it in video and I’ll post when were back home.

By noon we’d made it to Askrigg a great little village with a fantatic ‘village store cafe’. The food was great and refueled us for the final 6 miles into Hawes.

Hawes is a small market town packed with lots of people. I guess the good weather has brought out all the motorbikes 🙁

Total distance today was 18.5 miles making a total of 46 miles. We were flyingnalonv today taking only 8 hours including 90 minutes for lunch and stops.

Last night we had a great Indian meal at Rozi’s tandori house. The restaurant caters mainly for takeaway but has a small seating area upstairs. The food was made quickly and was very yummy. Our breakfast at the B&B was great and set us up well for the short 12 mile walk into Buckden.

We left the B&B at 9:15 and it was already very hot with clear blue skies and little wind. We bumped into another hiker for a short while doing something called the ‘Inn Way’ which appeared to follows the Dalesway. We then entered beautiful hills above Grassington passing two runners out weigh their dogs. The path up onto the hills was nice and lush green grass but hard to follow in sections with few visible landmarks. The GPS came out a couple of times to keep us on track.

We soon reached the top and continued on well defined trails skirting old collapsed mine shafts (from lead mining). Anyone taking these trails in poor weather would need to be quite careful. From the tools it was a lovely descent down into Kettlewell where we found a local pub serving Timothy Taylor Landlord ale! From the Racehorse Hotel we followed the valley along descending to join the Dalesway along the riverbank, There were lots of people out with dogs swimming in the river due to the high heat.

We entered Buckden, a small village hamlet around 4pm and found our hotel the Buck Inn, a 16th century coaching house. We settled into our room and then went down to the hotel for a nice pint of ale. We met several locals who’d just completed a charity walk supporting TFA, the tenant farmer network, and FCN, farm community network.

We overheard a very funny story from their hike: “I was walking along and saw a bunch of cows walking up the road. This cyclist then comes along at sled wearing all the fancy cycle gear clearly looking like he was on a time trial ride. Unwilling to wait or dismount, he starts to weave in and out of the cows at speed, This is working great until one of the cows turns sideways and t-bones the cyclist who flies over the top of the cow coming skidding to a halt on the road.”

Tomorrows walk is back up to 17 miles so we plan to have and early night so we can start the hike by 7am.

Arrived Grassington – 15 miles from our starting point in Skipton. Total time 8hrs with a 1hr lunch stop. The weather is OUTSTANDING at 70 – 80F. It’s almost a little too hot. We started out in long pants and quickly broke out shorts, tees and sunscreen.

The hiking is very easy today wih mostly flat trails. We followed footpaths from Skipton, Embsay, Eastby and Bardon. We stopped at Bardon Tower which had a cafe for an early lunch. From there we took the ‘Dales Way’ a very popular LDP. So popular in fact that sections were paved 🙁

Lots of wildlife on the trails sheep, cattle, birds – we even saw trout swimming in the river.

Tomorrow we head for Buckden an easy 12.5 miles away. The days beyound look a little mire daunting with some lovely 20+ mile days.

Time for shower and then onto the pub for some rehydration 🙂

Brett starts the Wonderland trip write up with an excellent summary of day 1.

We’re back from our wonderful hike on the Wonderland trail around Mt Rainier.    Our planned trip of 9 days was accelerated when we found out the park was forecast for 2” of rain causing approximately 2 feet of snow above 6000’.   Since bad weather was not in any of our plans, we hiked longer on day 6 (16 miles) and then hiked out the remaining 24 miles on day 7.    My left knee was extremely painful on the last day so the boys ended up carrying a bunch of my stuff to ensure we all made it out safely.

Overall, an outstanding hike.  By our calculations we did over 100 miles and likely over 24,000’ of elevation gain over 7 days.   I’ll definitely be visiting the park again in the near future.

We took lots of pictures during the trip and wrote a journal each night.   Full trip write up and photos coming over the next few weeks.

UPDATE: Full photos are now posted here.

I thoroughly enjoyed my 1st TGO challenge.   There were many challenges along the way for us to face.   The worst by far were Lynn’s blisters which caused her immense pain on many days.   Compared to this, my challenge was a walk in the park – big kudos to Lynn for working through it.

In reflecting back over our route and gear choices, there are a few things that worked and several things that didn’t.   I’d originally written our a long winded list and then decided it was pretty pointless – it comes down to three things:

1. Get your footwear right – Lynn had horrible blisters caused by wet feet and lots of road walking.   In future, she’ll be taking boots plus light weight running shoes.   This was the year of the foot challenge; so many of the folks we talked with had horrible blisters caused by the wet conditions.
2. Take care with long road walking days
   Days 3 – 6 covered almost 90km of hard road/military road walking.  This was brutal on our feet and totally exhausting.  In retrospect continuing on past Cougie lodge on Day 2 would have made this easier.
3. Get creative with food – our food was boringly similar each day (it didn’t help that I screwed up the packing).   Still, think about variety and consider picking up more stuff “on the go” as you hike through.

All in all, a great experience and one I would like to repeat.   Yes, even Lynn said she’s do it again too :-)   One thing that doesn’t come out in my trip report is the sheer camaraderie of Challengers.  They are a fun bunch, very friendly and always eager to offer a hand. I really enjoyed the social aspects alongside the solitariness of many of our “solo couple” days.

In the end, the hiking was great, the personal challenge wonderful but the friendship on the trial is priceless.   

Photos can’t do the event justice but sit back and enjoy a slideshow of our trip.

Happy trails,
Nigel.

Back to TGOC 2009 Index

[Trail blog is here]

   The next morning we woke early for a 7am breakfast. Had a lovely bowl of porridge and toast. We left the hotel and had a pretty uneventful walk into St Cyrus. Leaving Edzell you can cross the river on foot by taking a poorly marked path behind the petrol station. From there it’s a straight shot into Northwater Bridge. By the time we passed the campsite it was empty of challengers so we made a quick deposit in the loo and kept on trucking.

There was lots of road walking into St Cyrus with no other real options. After passing through Mains of Gallery we were a little peckish and thought about trying to find a pub in Marykirk. Rather than backtracking, we found a new set of stairs up and over the railway bridge. Not sure if this is intended for foot traffic but it was pretty cool with great views of the fields. Lots of arable land here with tons of rapeseed growing (yellow). Unfortunately the pub was closed so it was onto Morphie and more road walking into St Cyrus.

The weather was much better today with blue skies and nice sunshine. A fitting end to some of the worst weather the challenge has seen. On entering St Cyrus, we passed a small café which had lots of rucksacks outside (as sure sign of a Challenger’s “trade route”). From there it was on to the cliffs and a surprising descent down to the beach. We left our packs at the cliff top so it felt like nothing to climb down and back up after nice pictures snapped on the beach.

Off back to the café and then a bus ride into town on the "challenger express" before signing out at the Park Hotel. A nice welcome from Uncle Rodger, certificates, biscuits and tea before heading out to our B&B at the south end of town.

We were sore, tired, glad it was over but pleased to have finished our 1st TGO challenge.

Distance today was 18km making a total of 262km

On to final thoughts

[Trail blog is here]

Today was once again very wet with breaks of sun trying to shine through the torrential rain clouds. We left Tarfside at 8:20 powered by a gallon of tea and a bunch of bacon butties. Rather than following our planned route which would cross a bridge at NO533782, we crossed the river directly from Tarfside at NO492790 using a sketchy footbridge. This turned out to be a very good choice since our planned bridge crossing at NO533782 had a padlock on it!

The rain was brutal today and we were getting pretty cold and soggy by the time we made it into Edzell. Lynn’s blisters were playing up again so she made an executive decision that we’d stay in Edzell rather than pushing on the extra 6km to the campsite at Northwater Bridge. After checking in at the Panmure Arms Hotel, we walked down to the "Tuckin" to find lots of challengers eating huge plates of food. Richard and Andy were just leaving and heading out to camp so we said our goodbyes (they were planning on finishing early and pushing off for home).

Our stay there was bittersweet; we’d been looking forward to socializing with other challengers in camp and we were on our lonesome (with Bill) in the hotel for dinner. Fortune shined on us though when a mini-bus load of challengers (organized by Andy and Richard!) showed up and out pop Andy, Richard, Gordon, John (Manning) and Alistair. An outstanding dinner was had – don’t think we’ve laughed so much in ages.

Distance today was 20km making 244km to date

On to day 13 (the final day!)