Day 11: Brompton-on-Swale to Ingleby Cross

Weather: Cloudy with strong Westerley

Distance covered today: 29.9km (18.6mi)

Last night's B&B: Farmer's Arms

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 75%: 235.7km

Total Ascent/Total Descent: 302m/286m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 11 (click!)

Forgive me for feeling a bit tetchy!  I’ve finally gained access to the bar in tonight’s B&B, having been informed by the Publican and his assistant that the establishment shuts down between 3.00 pm and 6.00pm on a Sunday.  I arrived at 3.30pm, which I admit is a bit early, but I can’t believe these people haven’t experienced C2Cers arriving earlyish before?  They haven’t offered me so much as a cup of tea, which after a 30km (18mi) walk is the least I would expect.  They also informed me that I had booked a double room for tomorrow night, not a single for tonight!  Fortunately, I had the paperwork with me to prove that precisely the correct booking had been made.  So I’m sitting here, steaming gently, looking forward to a pint of bitter after a hot bath to evaporate all the bad humour away! 

All this is a pity, because I have had a really good day so far. The weather was perfect for walking, cloudy and cool with a strong following wind blowing me along through the most delightful rural countryside.  I had of course opted not to spend the night in Richmond which would have added a further 6km (3.5mi) to today’s already lengthy walk.  It seems that most of my fellow walkers preferred to spend the night in Richmond, which is understandable as it is a regional centre.  The result is that, slightly to my surprise, I saw only one other walker all day long, a taciturn Antipodean who I had not previously met and who preferred to walk along roads, so he soon disappeared.  

This is therefore almost the first time I have walked alone on this trip and it coincided with a return to the sort of countryside I know so well from previous walks. In some ways, it reminded me of my walks between the end of Offa’s Dyke and the start of the Pennine Way where the countryside was vaguely similar.  In particular, the arable farming on a flat plain is reminiscent of the Peddars Way.  The difference is that the farms here are still somehow local and individual, unlike the huge agribusiness ventures in East Anglia.  That said, I saw less evidence today of meadow borders and other wild life protection enhancements than were evident in Norfolk.  Maybe it’s just a matter of economics.  These farmers probably live so much closer to the bone that they can’t afford environmental enhancements.  I’m sure that they would anyway argue that their farming methods are in general more environmentally friendly than the huge estates, and I’d probably agree, although I have to admit that I know next to nothing about it!

The Coast-to-coast path hopped nimbly through these farms. I was initially concerned that a hike through the flatlands of North Yorkshire might be a little tame after the exhilarating landscapes and adventures already experienced on this walk, but Wainwright and his heirs have developed an ingenious passage through the landscape so that the vista changes minute by minute.  By and large, he tried to rely only on official footpaths and rights-of-way, but this proved too difficult and the authorities have negotiated permissive paths through farmland with the cooperation of the local farmers.  This can’t have been easy, because walkers are not always the responsible adherents to the Countryside Code that one would hope they would be.  This has led to one or two eccentric changes of direction, but in general it all adds up to a highly satisfying walk.  

Coincidentally, it also involved passing through the lowest point between the two coasts: the little village of Danby Wiske, which according to my Satnav is a mere 37m above sea-level.  It, like so many others in England, has a horrific history.  The Black Death killed so many of its residents 700 hundred years ago that the survivors burned down the village, sparing only the church, and rebuilt the village some way away. Today the church stands in unusual and splendid isolation.

Earlier, in the surprising little village of Bolton-on-Swale, I discovered the grave of one Henry Jenkins, who, it is claimed, lived to 169 years. He died in 1670, still going on about Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1539.  Implausible, if not downright as impossible as this sounds, he was apparently in great demand after the Civil War to settle claims about who had previously owned what and the court records show it!  My guide book also tells me that two of the Gunpowder Plotters, John and Kit Wright were born here.  The history of these places is fascinating. 

Finally I completed the set of roads and railways, crossing over the East Coast Main Line.  Given all the fuss about HS2, and in the quiet of the afternoon, I found myself wondering why there were actually so few trains on the line, when everyone is complaining of lack of capacity.  I found myself using applied maths, tortuously extracted from decaying memory cells, to decide that the answer is that more platforms should be built, so that trains can arrive and leave stations at one minute intervals and to make the equations balance, the trains will have to accelerate and decelerate at huge G forces, so that passengers will have to be strapped in to avoid being thrown all over the place.  Seems fair enough to me!  It will certainly save billions! And the passengers are only customers after all!

Perhaps I’ll go and discuss my plan with the Publican. I’m sure he will be a supporter!

He's one of them!!  This whippet lean chef in last night's B&B did the C2C in 2 days 9 hours. I told him he was crazy. He told me he did it with his Dad, who is a military man and beasted him all the way1

My last look at the Swale, which has grown from a vicious young beck into this graceful older river.  It eventually flows into the North Sea via the Humber

The gravestone of Henry Jenkins, who lived to 169 years. This large memorial was erected through the subscriptions of his peers

The C2C path enters the arable lands

Including Rape

Not much room for hedgehogs and flowers and bees

The solitary church in Danby Wiske

The East Coast Main Line; this was of course a local train

Beautiful ears of wheat

Arable fields punctuated with woodlands

I'm heading for those North York Moors (at full zoom!)

So, what is your super-computer telling you now?

A warning from a local farmer at the start of his permissive path....

The owl is presumably watching everything that I, the rat-walker is doing, and if I don't behave, my skull will bleach in the sun.  Is that the message?

A rather pudgy lamb for Phyllis.  The Swaledales are behind us, and these are more conventional, (says he, demonstrating his vast knowledge of sheep!) 

Finally, tomorrow's objective looms large above me

The maelstrom of the A19. The cars seemed vindictively to be accelerating towards me!

The Day's elevation profile, including the lowest level on the journey between the seas