(N.B. Hover your mouse over the pictures for captions)
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After a lovely breakfast, we headed up the road togged up in waterproofs. We met Nancy and Joe and walked with them for a short while past Gamelands Stone Circle. Crossing over a muddy stile, we carried along field paths and onto Sunbiggin Lane for a while. Soon the road finished and we walked down a track and onto the moor. |
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Despite the poor weather, I was really enjoying the walk. I had changed to my second pair of boots, fabric ones, and my feet were more comfortable. We soon arrived at the road junction and headed south. This was a memorable part of the walk: the roads were really very quiet with hardly any cars and great scenery. |
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Soon we turned off onto the moors once again, enjoying the walk past Bents farm, and to a lunch stop shortly after. It is a golden rule that we have lunch over halfway through the day's walk, so there were just over five miles to go. |
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After lunch, we headed off to the picturesque Smardale Bridge. Because of its remoteness, there weren't hordes of day-trippers here, just a couple more coast-to-coasters. Wonderful. |
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The pull up to Smardale fell was surprisingly long,... |
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... but we were soon on the top, trying to figure out which hill in the murky distance was Nine Standards Rigg. We descended from the fell, crossed the railway line and through pleasant pastures to Green Riggs Farm. As always the last mile and a half from here was the hardest of the day, along the road into Kirkby Stephen. We met Howard and Lynda, who recommended the Pink Geranium coffee shop, where we had coffee and cakes. |
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At the tourist information centre, we enquired about the best place to eat an evening meal. Unfortunately one pub had a quiz night on, and the other one didn't really look that good. We wanted to find a nice place because friends Ann and David were coming to see us for the night. Eventually, we went to our B&B and tried to book a table at a place slightly out of town. This was full, so we went to the Kings Head instead. Although this had rather a basic bar, the restaurant turned out to be quite nice, and the food was good, with a most attentive waitress. So it all turned out all right after all, and everyone had a good night. |
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