Buckden to Askrigg, 12 miles, 1430 feet of ascent

Today’s walk was demanding but not impossible, beautiful but not filled with specific memorable moments, asking my attention to each step on the sometimes stony foot-wracking path but also leaving my mind time to wander. In the middle of the walk, on a stretch that even the walking guide I am using to keep the trail described as “bleak,” I reflected that the birds and small animals hold domain up here, and I felt humbled.

But the day started with something I haven’t had in a while: an extended conversation with other Americans. It turned out there was an American couple staying at my B&B. Because this B&B has only two guest rooms and one big table for breakfast, you would have to work not to chat with your fellow guests if you had breakfast at the same time. They were an academic couple from Boston. He teaches math pedagogy (His polished old saw “those who can’t do teach, those who can’t teach teach others to teach”) and she is a scientist doing something with genetics. We exchanged walking stories (He has brought his wife and his parents, aged 87 and 88, to recreate a trip he did with his parents nine years ago, walking around the Dales. His parents are still walking the hills!), and one of them made a general remark about avoiding talking politics these days.

But they asked me what I do. I’m a communications director for a homelessness non-profit, so it is hard to say much of anything without remarking on the challenges we face right now. Once the door was opened, we chatted about the challenges they face, because the place he teaches teachers to teach is, ahem, Harvard, and though she remained vaguer, I think her lab is at Harvard too. So we talked for a while about adjusting to a new set of federal priorities and radically altered budgets. And then we just eased away into other subjects, all three of us sensing, I think, our mutual desire to not talk about it for a while, to treat our time abroad as an escape. They were also headed to Askrigg, but I left ahead of them, thinking I might see them again at the end of the day if we ended up in the same inn.

I knew from the route profile that today was a lot of rapid up, some over, and some rapid down from Buckden to Askrigg.

The forecast was mixed, and it had been raining and then drizzling since I awoke. The temperature was a bit lower than yesterday (50 degrees), and I was ready for some wet chilly hiking. But I heat up fast when I am moving. So off I went. Buckden is very small (one street essentially, with a few lanes shooting off with houses), and the instant the path left town it began a persistent rise. It was invigorating, and I started breathing with an audible rhythm on each exhalation, but I found a good pace and headed up. And up.

After maybe half an hour of climbing, I got a view of the real drama ahead, a place called Hell Gap. Gulp.

You may be thinking that despite the name, that dip looks quite inviting, and there’s a road and everything. Let me explain how these paths are laid out. They tease you with something like this view. But in fact Lady Anne’s Way will only hit that paved road for about a quarter of a mile, then veer off to the left and go up to that high top on a rocky hard-packed dirt road that will take up the next 3 miles of the trail.

The next hour and change of walking was not physically demanding. The path was obvious, and aside from avoiding some big puddles from last night’s rain, it was easy enough. There was a set of what must be shooting blinds for quail hunting (?), and of course stone walls every so often, but otherwise, it was a big flat-ish open expanse, where I thought about how big the world is and how small we are.

This was the domain of the birds, the quiet broken only by the sound of the light wind and bird call. I tried again to get pictures of birds in flight, but they have a genius for flying slowly right in front of me when my phone is in my pocket, but veering off into the distance when I get it out.

Faced with all this emptiness and a trail that didn’t totally sap my strength, I got to reflecting, and landed on the word humbled.

It set me off thinking of two ways to describe these walks. One version is triumphal and celebrates my heroic overcoming of obstacles. I am Lord Hank, who re-found the path, or at least a path, yesterday! I made it over that hill! I climbed every one of those goddamn 14 stiles on the way into Kettlewell! On a second approach to Kettlewell, I outsmarted the trail guide and avoided those 14 stiles! I am triumphant!

But turn the experience like a gem with many facets, and the whole thing looks different. The world challenged me. The path reminded me of my limits. The stiles warned me that some day I won’t be able to climb three stone steps and wriggle through a tight opening in the stone wall to get down the other side. The vastness of nature and the sheer effort it takes to even go 12 miles in a landscape that has been domesticated by centuries and centuries of use, it is humbling.

Just when the rivers of thought were running perhaps too deep, the path began to take me down, slowly, ever so slowly, bringing me back to the world of farms, and sheep more used to humans, and paved roads.

After a bit of road walking and a cell tower (?), the path cut across fields on grassy turf heading east before turning north again to get to Askrigg.

I was also struck by the variety in the walls. In the Lake District, we saw slate and shale walls, with long flat rocks. In this part of Yorkshire, big round stones are more common, but there are some interesting local changes. And you can see the difference in craftsmanship. Check out one rather ragged looking but functional wall made of stone that seems to be coming apart as it stands.

Compare that to the elegant layering of a wall a little later on the way with some longer flat rocks jutting out just a bit, giving the wall a more considered look. Think of the effort in either wall.

Askrigg came tantalizingly into view:

The white tower to the left is a church tower in Askrigg. But the path has a will of its own, and drifts further east, to the right, to get me down to the River Ure. Yes, we’ve passed out of Wharfedale, the valley system of the Wharfe River, and now we are in Wensleydale, the upper valley of the Ure.

After briefly touching a paved road and getting across the river, there was a taunting sign.

But that is not the path. Lady Anne’s Way must go right, up the hill to reach Nappa Hall, a stopping place along Lady Anne’s route through her estates, and a rarely well-preserved Medieval building. I couldn’t cut out that last mile and a half of the trail just to get to Askrigg faster. Onward!

And now that I was up the hill, the path to Askrigg was jsuta an amble through narrow grassy areas next to a road.

In Askrigg, I treated myself to a hot chocolate and a pork pie, partly to kill time until my room was ready. Then a bath! For the second day in a row, I am staying in a room with a bathtub, and I am using it. Weird-I don’t take baths at home more than once a year, preferring the shower. But after these two long days of walking, I’ve had a bath each day and loved it. Dinner in my inn’s restaurant (a chicken masala curry, fine), and then to bed to ‘read’, an activity that involved a lot of napping before giving up and watching a little television (the room has a TV, and the astonishingly long-running British police procedural Midsomer Murders was on, perfect to drowse to).

Tomorrow, just six miles and then a day off! But today was good, and I feel, to turn that gem of experience in my hand again, both proud of my achievement and humbled by the world.

Postscript: In case that all seems too philosophical, I will note that my singing rotation today included “You’ll Be Back” (King George’s song from Hamilton), “Wild Mountain Thyme” (A Scottish/Irish folk tune you know even if you don’t know the words) and the infuriatingly catchy theme song from Super Chicken, complete with clucking noises. The birds and sheep must have been amused.