Hawes to Outhgill, 11 miles, 1352 feet of ascent

When I got to the end of my walk to day, I had a lot of time to kill (again), but this time in Outhgill, which has no shops at all, or really any place to hang out. The company that organizes my walks gives you a description sheet for each day’s lodging, with check-in time and address and notes on local food options (not recommendations, just if there are any restaurants and places to buy supplies for lunches). When there is a taxi pick-up, as today, it tells you how to get from the path to the pick-up. Today’s pick-up spot is a disused red telephone box in Outhgill.

Contours note on this: Please note there is nowhere to shelter here in wet or windy conditions. Great, so what should I do if it is inclement weather, as was predicted this morning? I had arranged for a taxi at 4pm (I’d tried for 3:30 when I called, but the driver said he’d still be doing school pick-ups, a big part of local taxis’ regular business in this part of the world), so 4pm. I got to Outhgill at 2pm in a chilly low 50s, windy and hints of coming rain. So before getting to the phone box, I huddled down under a tree in the churchyard, wearing both my fleece and my rain jacket and using my flannel shirt (packed in my backpack mostly because I can’t fit everything in my suitcase) to cover my legs for warmth, and thought about the day. My initial thought was “Well, there’s nothing to say about today.”

Which for a writer is alarming but for me as a walker means I have reached that point in the walk where it is all blurring together a bit: more hills; one big up push where I end up gasping; sheep; gates to open and close; stiles to climb; rocky paths where I think about how complicated the micro-adjustments we demand of our feet are on uneven surfaces when we walk; some attempts to photograph birds; a few streams to ford; a stretch of either downhill where I am reminded of my knees and thank the gods for walking poles.

Seen it, said it, sorted. (For those who haven’t been in the UK recently, there’s a public safety message on trains that urges you to report suspicious activities which ends with the slogan “See it. Say it. Sorted.”)

In fact, today did have a few notable memories.

My legs seemed rather annoyed at first to learn that after yesterday’s casual wandering around town and cheese-sampling, today was back to the grind. And there was this baffling sign.

There were pretty barns to photograph.

Twice, the rural tranquility was interrupted when pairs of fighter jets roared through the valleys flying low. Yesterday my B&B host told me that one of the largest aerial training facilities in Europe is nearby, and all sorts of planes buzz through these valleys on their way to the Irish Sea as part of their training. Both times I failed to get photos because despite the incredible racket jets make, it all happened fast.

And today on the way up the one truly fierce uphill, I saw a person in the distance ahead of me.

And when I was about a third of the way up myself, he came back down from the top at a trot, after a few minutes met me, and stopped to chat. He said he’d been up and down twice already and this was his third. He said he’d meet me again on his way back up, and I thought both “well, yeah, because I am going slow like a normal human would on a 45% incline with slippery bits in the grass, and you are trotting like a demented mountain goat” but also “Jeez, thanks for assuming I am so slow that you are bound to pass me again.”

After I reach to top of the hill and started on the miles of relatively flatter walking, feeling very smug that I had made it to the top before he caught up, he came up behind me, stopped briefly again to chat. He was barely winded, which annoyed me. He was cheerful, which annoyed me. But I was in awe. This buy was in his fifties, I’d say, and was clearly jogging on ahead of me to somewhere, and had gone down and back up that hill three times. Lunatic. Icon. Whichever. When I said I was heading to Outhgill, which I reckoned was about six miles, he nodded and said “Oh you’ll be there in no time. Two hours.” Um, sure…

The top was scenic in the same way several of my high hikes have been.

And then a funny thing happened. I saw a very high hill in the distance off to the west (I was heading northwest at the moment, but my general direction for this part of the day was northward), and thought “do I know that hill?” I used the zoom on my phone camera to see what looked like trees or stone features at the top, and thought “great heavens, I am sure I have hiked that!” I took a few photos.

Later research on the Ordnance Survey may tells me I have mistaken this peak for Ingleborough, which is further southwest, which I did climb.

One very photographed thing along Lady Anne’s Way is the Water Cut sculpture. I knew I was supposed to pass it in the second half of today’s walk. I sort of kept my eye out for it, but wasn’t sure how big it actually is. And looking at the cruder maps in my guidebook pages, I convinced myself at one point that I had somehow walked right past it. I was annoyed with myself, but obviously not turning around to go back and find it. Glad I didn’t.

The Water Cut, created by sculptor Mary Bourne, is one of ten sculptures that pepper the valleys of the River Eden. It is meant to evoke the way a river winds and cuts through valleys. But I think Bourne was in part inspired by the way local stone creates weird shaped pieces. Just check out these stone decorations atop garden walls in Hawes.

Finally, after Water Cut, the trail started a long downward thrust to get to the river valley and eventually to the hamlet of Outhgill. And there, I killed time reflecting first that nothing had happened today, and then self-correcting.

Notes on equipment

In past years, I’ve written about equipment. For these last five days, I’ll throw in a bit about my gear. Today, walking poles.

These are my walking poles. There are many like them, but these are mine. My poles are my best friends. They are my life. (Okay, enough with the rifleman’s creed parody) When I first started doing long-distance walks, and was a foolish youth in my forties, I didn’t have poles. Those were for old people. But I learned. I have owned three sets of walking poles (thank you, Tracy and Tim, for the gift of my previous pair!). For purposes of transporting them, most walking poles collapse in some way. Some are telescoping, which is how my previous poles worked, But eve when collapsed in, they are kind of long, and I always had a challenge with my soft black bag that I used to use for travel, wedging them in at an angle that made me pack around them. Backpacks mostly have some sort of pole attachment system for poles that have been telescoped in, so once you are walking you can store them for stretches where they aren’t needed. But getting them from the U.S. to the trail was always a pain. But another kind of walking pole are designed to break in thirds, with a high-tech rubber or polymer piece connecting the pieces so that the poles can fold. That makes them shrink to a much shorter dimension, easier to pack.

And they make a huge difference for walking, both for the general ambling across flat green, where the poles take a surprising amount of weight off your feet and into your arms, and for the ups and downs, where they are truly a knee and calf saver. On hard uphills you can use them to sort of pull yourself up when your thighs are getting weary and shaky. And on tricky bits of downhill, you can use them to support you as you descend. If you want to do a walk like this, get walking poles. Embrace them.