What a difference a day can make. We went from a sopping wet mess to waking to gorgeous blue skies, crisp morning air, and one of the most beautiful days we would experience. Our boots were still soaked, but that didn’t dampen our spirits.
The innkeep showed us how to catch back up to the trail without backtracking. Taking a small backcountry road, we were able to catch back up to the trail quickly.
Stretched far in front of us were miles on miles of farmland. The iconic images people think of when they think of England spread before us. Still not in the Yorkshire Dales, the day would be spent hoofing it through pastures and past farms.
We were fortunate for the day to be so beautiful because this would have been a tough hike if the weather had been the same as the day before. After about a mile, the right of way ended at a narrow road.
There is a running “joke”… joke isn’t really the right word, hmm.. okay, maybe it’s more that I have gained notoriety in my house that EVERY vacation, at some point, some animal would become my best buddy.
The first trip Ron and I took to Ireland together, I spent a good hour petting a horse, scrubbing the mud off of his neck, with the horse resting his head on my head, followed shortly after by our B&B’s cat following me around. Our second trip to Ireland, a dog followed me when I spread my step dad’s ashes, staying with me the entire time and walking with me back to town. In Thailand, a stray dog followed me around the hotel, skirting any other guest. My son is flabbergasted with how every trip, some animal comes up to me for love: “Whhhhhyy??? Hooowww???”
This trip, the first encounter was with a horse. Walking down the narrow road, a horse trotted over to me. Standing up next to the wall, I was able to give my buddy a good little scratch before we went on our way.
As we continued down the road, we passed through several working farms before leaving the roadway again. This next section was more of a public walking trail. We passed several locals out walking in the lovely weather. One woman had this big old Rottweiler that was the sweetest thing. She was surprised we weren’t skittish because most people were afraid of the breed and its size. This was a much bigger Rottie than is standard for the breed. You can imagine this dog inspiring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles.
We traversed back into large, open pastures, with a path weakly outlined in front of us. At one point, we spun, looking in all directions, not seeing a single person or vehicle. We said that it felt like it could be the apocalypse and we were the last two people on earth.
After several miles, the trail was supposed to lead us to a dismantled railway. This part of the trail was a bit confusing. On the map, it marks a “settlement,” which we could see one building in the distance.
As we approached it, what we thought should have been the path was behind a locked gate. We tried passing under the path we were trying to get to, hoping we could maybe find another spot to catch the trail. Ultimately, we climbed over a wooden fence and climbed up to the path. I don’t know what the proper route was supposed to be to catch up to this path, but based on what we saw, nothing was evident.
The trail took us along a raised, grass path, following high above the Scandal Beck River, then down a gentle hill to an old stone bridge that would take us over the river. We paused for a quick refill of water while we had access to running water.
The terrain started to incline sharply. We knew we had about another two to three miles walking through pastures, but it felt like an eternity at this point. And it felt like we kept going up, up, up. When we finally peaked the hill, we looked into the distance and couldn’t figure out where Kirkby Stephen was nestled… how much further do we have??
The pasture sloped gently down, and the trail dropped of us off on another small country road. Turning right onto it, we then turned left on a road lined with trees. Somewhere in those trees was a break back into the trail. The map showed us the lay out of the pastures, so we knew not to enter the first pasture but find a break into the second one.
Sure enough, the trail was actually marked! We wound our way through several more pastures. In front of us was a tunnel under a railway. As we closed the fence behind us, a farmer came through the tunnel on an ATV with his sheep dog standing guard next to him.
He passed us to our right, and we watched as he herded up his field of sheep, rounding them up between his sheep dog and the ATV. He’d call to the dog to drop to its belly and wait, or cut to the right or left. We followed shortly behind them through the tunnel, and saw them herd the sheep into the farm’s courtyard. We watched for a moment before circling around the farm.
Here the path ended and the rest of the walk was roadway. Our B&B was a half a mile before reaching downtown Kirkby Stephen, but we walked into town for dinner that evening. By the way, our hosts at Lockholme B&B were awesome. Fortunately, we were the only ones staying there because we asked them to do two weeks worth of laundry (we had gone to Scotland before starting the Coast to Coast). They were super obliging, very friendly, and very informative of the trail. They also had a really good drying room and our things were bone dry by the next morning.
This was the first evening we were able to have something besides traditional English pub food. The Mango Tree is an Indian restaurant, and I highly recommend going. Our Bangladeshi server was super friendly, and the food was absolutely fantastic. There’s also a hiking store in town if you need to resupply.
Pretty non-eventful day. Maybe even a little boring after a while. There’s only so many pastures you can walk through before they’re no longer unique! We were thankful for a beautiful day and were excited to venture into the Dales the next day, unsure of what the next national park had in store for us.
Til’ tomorrow 👋🏻
Missed any days? Check out my Coast to Coast blog for the rest of our two week adventure across England.
