Outhgill to Church Brough, 12.5 miles, 604 feet of ascent

We have reached the point in a long walk at which my brain starts to switch off and I need to remind myself to remember the day’s details. It’s a kind of mindless walking, still attentive to wayfinding (though I did make an obvious mistake at a turning today that I might not have made a few days ago), but taking in experience and then pushing them into memory without any emphases or highlighting. If I look at photos (and there were far fewer today than, say, a week ago) and read the trail guide, I can reconstruct and say ‘oh, yeah, this morning I stopped and talked to two farmers in their farmyard, where one was holding a hypodermic to give the sheep in a pen some medicine or something, and they seemed puzzled but not exactly rude about why I would come from America to walk more than once.’ But the day doesn’t have the same clean coherent structure as some of my earlier days, when I was sort of taking mental notes for a blog post and giving the day a structure.

So, with help from my photos and trail guide, I can affirm that some interesting things happened today and it was a good but long walk. I did indeed talk to those two farmers, and there were two very calm dogs, mother and pup I think, who came near me to sniff while we chatted but didn’t bark or jump up or even beg to be petted.

But that came after other things that, as I think back on the day, were also interesting to me and are rising in my mind like cream to the top of milk. For example, at breakfast I confirmed that my accommodation for the night in Kirkby Stephen (after the taxi pickup at Outhgill last night) seems, I would guess, to have a reputation as LGBT-friendly. Shortly after checking in, when I went from my single bedroom (narrow bed again, one of four or five I’ve had on this trip. ugh) to the separate bathroom that is only for my room but not en suite, I met two older gentlemen who had clearly just checked in and were heading to one of the en suite doubles that make up the rest of the rooms in this B&B. At breakfast, there they were and we chatted a bit. They’re walking the Coast to Coast, and one of them is turning 75 on the trip, when they stop for a day of rest and celebration at Richmond, which is where Tracy and I stopped for a day years ago on that trail. Then a younger lesbian couple (mid-30s) came in and picked up what was clearly an ongoing walkers’ friendship with the men, chatting about yesterday on the CtC and plans for today. I say they were a couple, not just two women walking together, and trust me, that’s what this was. So, if you are looking for a good accommodation that’s LGBT-friendly in Kirkby Stephen, may I recommend the Old Croft House. Just note that if you are a solo traveler, you might get the one room with the narrow bed.

My taxi driver was the same from last night, and he’ll also pick me up tonight at the Brough Castle Tea Room and Ice Cream Shop in Church Brough to take me to Appleby to sleep, and then drive me back tomorrow morning from Appleby to Church Brough so that I can walk from Church Brough back to Appleby to the same B&B for a second night. I wonder what he thinks of all this. But whatever he really thinks, he made good conversation, and we nodded together on how loud and steady the rain was in the night.

Which of course means mud and standing pools on the trail. I got started at my old friend the decommissioned telephone booth (many have been repurposed to hold defibrillators, but this one holds a rotting tray table and a lot of spider webs.

About a mile up the trail, the way passes Pendragon Castle, a ruin that was part of Lady Anne’s estates. It’s a 12th Century Norman castle, and was attacked by Scottish raiders in 1342 and 1541. By the 1600s it was a ruin, but Lady Anne rebuilt it in 1660 (she’d be 70 at this point, and in her big rebuild and restore phase). But her successor wasn’t interested in this one and basically stripped it for parts, including the lead from the roof. By the late 1700s, it had mostly collapsed.

By this point in the walk, very early indeed, I had already seen the impact of last night’s rain. There was a stile, over which I climbed only to find a deepish puddle, utterly unavoidable, on the other side of the wall. So, left foot down into muddy water, up nearly to the ankle, right foot spared because I could take the next step beyond the puddle. Wet sock.

I should note that once your socks are wet on a walk, they will almost always stay wet for the rest of the walk. You’ll have wet feet at the end of the day that look like you just got out of a long bath.

But onward. Chat with two farmers and their dogs, trying to explain why it’s nice to get out of the big city of Chicago to walk in the country, while they both looked dubious but in a nice way. Then up the hillside a bit to follow a meandering path through the undergrowth, including a long section of my nemeses, ferns (for the new followers, please see the 2022 post, Ferns and Loathing).

These ferns had entered an agreement with stinging nettles for mutual benefit, so I got brushed on the legs by stinging nettles, which are, I assure you , aptly named. I felt the sting sharply at first, but vaguely for the rest of the day.

And, because the gods believe in balance, while crossing a stream, my right foot went into the water. So now both feet were wet. Oh well. I had once again failed to pack spare socks. When will I learn?

This part of the walk was punctuated by the passing of a big cargo plane heading, I assume, to that nearby air force training base. And then a single jet. I only got a photo of the slower cargo plane.

More walking brought my further north through fields and into funny section near habitations where the path goes into narrow enclosed lanes.

As my note about taxis and Church Brough suggests, the relationship of walk to accommodation can be weird, and so today’s walk brought me along the edges of Kirky Stephen, where I stayed last night. This was about 7 miles into the hike, and I encountered my old friend the Coast to Coast Trail, which has gotten spiffed up a bit.

After Kirkby Stephen, the path got back into agrarian concerns again, and a funny thing happened. I mean, it was funny this time. I went into a field full of cows, and they showed interest. And came toward me. But this group was less aggressive about getting in tight formation in front of me, just sort of hanging in a scattered group, so I could walk past, weaving my way among them. And sure enough, they followed me to the stile, and because the field was L-shaped and my stile escape was it the inner corner of the L, they followed me across a wall all the way to the end, with one mooing in an annoyed ‘where is the food humans usually bring’ way.

After crossing a few more fields, the path brought me to the small village of Winton, which looked to me like an upscale community based mostly on the cars parked in front of the houses. This was around the 8.5 mile mark, so I stopped in the village square, which had no businesses but had a few pieces of playground equipment, two picnic tables and a nice bench. So I stopped and had lunch, which consisted of a Clif bar. Surprisingly filling when you are hiking.

I was getting tired, more than I would have expected to be after this little walking say five or six days ago. The regular walking has reached a point at which the feet ache by the end of the day. It wasn’t helped, I am sure, by the fact that my feet were wet.

But onward for the last four mile, over hill and dale, to get to Church Brough.

I passed through a farm field where a farmer was mowing. The path is right on the edge of his mowing, so I just got as far off as I could and he went by, and we exchanged the usual wave between walker and vehicle driver.

I got into a pleasant walking trance, stopping every so often to take a photo of something interesting, like another insanely narrow stile or an unexpected rock face by a stream.

And then, in my trance-like state, I was doing my late-in-the-day slow climb up and over the steps of a stile, when out of nowhere, someone said “Hello.” I startled and made a visible little jump, and a woman not six feet away said “Sorry, I didn’t want to startle you.” I had been so deep in my walking that she had come up behind me across the field. Now, had I been her, I might have called out hello from a distance before I was climbing over a wall, but oh well.

We chatted briefly. She lives in Brough Sowerby, which she pointed out on the hillside ahead. Learning I was going to Church Brough, she said I didn’t have much further to go. For locals out for a walk, this can mean anything fro two hundred yards to two miles. I knew in this case it was closer to two miles. Not much further, I guess, but it depends on how far you’ve come…

And then she went on ahead, because she was clearly walking faster than me. And while I could still see her in the distance ahead, passing through a field, you’ll never guess what happened. Or perhaps you will. Field. Cows. Me. Get the picture. This little herd had one rambunctious young one who sort of trotted toward me, but they were behind me when they started coming toward me (I had noted their interested looks off to my left early in the field, and was checking on their location every so often). So this one sort of skipped and did a little bucking hop about twenty feet to my left. I said “hey, no” or something, and the cow stopped and downshifted to a walking pace, then let me get ahead while other cows caught up. Then it happened again. The rambunctiousness made me a bit nervous, but I soldiered on and got to a gate. So long, suckers!

I lost sight of the woman up ahead, and after a few more gates and stile, I came to a riddle. There was a metal gate, with the usual spring bolt, but also tied off with a length of rope. Sometimes a gate has some twine or rope looped over the top that you have to lift off in addition to doing the spring bolt or latch, but this one was tied shut. I looked around for a stile. No. There was no trail marker at this gate, but about fifteen yards previously, coming up the hill there had been a marker that seemed to point to this gate. And I got out the phone and checked GPS and compared to my trail guide map, and yes, that dirt road on the other side of the gate was where I wanted to be. Where had the woman gone? Oh well. I climbed over the metal gate, using its metal crossbars as steps. Not something you are supposed to do, but I couldn’t figure out an alternative solution.

And then I got to the road leading into Brough Sowerby. I knew I didn’t go through it, but the map was not super-detailed, and only indicated that I was turning right at a farm. I made a classic late day mistake. Seeing a bridle path marker at the top of a road going down to a farm, I assumed it was this one. But when I had gone maybe an eighth of a mile down and up toward the farm, I could see that it didn’t match the drawn map. I couldn’t, as the directions urged, go to the left around the farm. GPS was no help, not showing either a bridle path here or my path further up the road I had left. I concluded I had turned too soon, clomped back down and up to the paved road, and headed again toward Brough Sowerby. And sure enough, just at the edge of the village, which is really not how it looked on the drawn map and would have been a useful description in the written directions in the guide, there was a way marker for Lady Anne’s Way. This took me to a farm where the left turn made sense. It wasn’t a huge wrong turn (I’ve walked a mile on the wrong way, and that is when my language turns colorful), but this late in the day it was annoying.

Finally, after a few more fields, I climbed over the top of a hill to see Brough Castle, another of Lady Anne’s restoration projects.

A bit more walking got me there. This castle is built on the site of a Roman fort. It sits at the bottom of a major pass leading north, which explains why Romans and Normans were so big on building here.

I got there at 3pm, after six hours of walking, which is pretty good time. My taxi was coming at 3:45, so I had time for an ice cream and a little stretch-out on the grass (an area where the sheep couldn’t get access, of course). And then a taxi ride to Appleby, during which the driver and I chatted about the proposal to expand the section of fast road we were on from two lanes to four. He is all in favor, noting how crowded and dangerous this section gets, and that other parts of this road to the east and to the west are already four lanes. It was good aimless chat, and I also learned this man, 61, has only flown once, on a trip to Ireland. He’s thinking of slowing down on work, and maybe traveling again to places he would reach by airplane. There was a wistfulness in his voice.

Tomorrow, I’ll come back to Church Brough to take a much slower path to Appleby.

Huh. Turns out I do remember this day pretty well.

Note on Equipment

My boots. I’ve worn through four or five pairs since taking up this long-distance walking thing. I’ve tried North Face and Merrell and now Oboz. I know I should have a passionate opinion about which are the best, but I’ve liked them all. I have been lucky to find boots that fit the shape of my feet.

You’ll note a few things. First, yes they are wet. Most boots are at very least water resistant and all mine have claimed to be waterproof. I’ve owned these for a few years, and whatever waterproofing was there has faded enough that I bought waterproofing spray last year to try to give them a boost. But no amount of waterproofing will keep your feet dry when the water gets up above the top laces.

The other thing you might note is that I tuck my laces in on themselves. (One lace has come loose, but this is 8.5 miles into the walk.) This is to keep the laces from flapping around and getting into the mud and muck on the trail. Last night in Kirkby Stephen, as I was doing my elaborate unlacing in the front hall of my B&B, I explained to the landlord that it was my trick for keep the laces cleaner. “Everybody has their tricks with the boots,” he said. Fair enough.