Another great day! 13.8 miles, 1,443 ft of climbing. Started at 9:03am, which is the fourth time I’ve noticed that, weirdly consistent. 5 and 1/2 hours of walking (not including lunch & snack breaks, and the 15 min of stopping to put blister bandages on my toes. All good on that front, just trying to get more proactive before things get bad.) I’m exhausted inside the little camping pod this evening; blew up my air mattress, pulled off my boots and pulled out my sleeping bag and collapsed into a long nap. I forgot to bring a cup on this backpacking portion of the trip, so sadly no afternoon tea even though there is a kettle at the campsite. It will be a backpacking meal for dinner, which I noticed expires probably after I will😆.
Today was all about the sky. And the roads, as we were on them for about 9 miles. Every description of the journey today moaned about the awful bogs so we scoured the maps for an alternative. And we found it! Starting on a sort of busy B road, we had to be careful and do some hopping into the verge as cars passed by, but they saw us well in advance (usually) and all was well. We continued on smaller and quieter roads, weaving through the very sparsely populated countryside. The whole way we were in awe of the expanse of blue against puffy white clouds. We haven’t really seen much other than various shades and thicknesses of grey for days, so this was a real treat. Most of the time I felt was walking through Wyoming or Montana: grasslands and sky!
It was simply a pretty day with fun things to see. There was an old stone building that had its roof blown off at some point (very ‘Wizard of Oz-y’), there were pretty flowers, there were unusual grey sheep and also recently shorn sheep who were unusually curious about us. We saw only one other person the whole day - a cyclist who was also very surprised to see us out on the road, and he in turn surprised a sheep off the road. Just before entering the spruce forest, we came to a farm that had a herd of Highland coos (cows, but most people refer to them with that long ‘u’ sound); we stood for a long while talking to them, they just continued placidly chewing. They do seem to be very gentle and calm, which is what the breed is known for. Still, I was happy to be on the other side of the fence. As we left the farm I saw a beautiful old gate that I found enchanting; don’t know why, its weatheredness just spoke to me. Wish I was a better photographer.
The nice, dry, wide trail continued through the plantation of spruce trees, and the official Pennine Way joined our route. We walked until we came to our home for the night in the hamlet of Cottonshopeburnfoot. That’s a 19-letter town name, and is the longest one in England. It actually rivals with the hamlet a mile up the path (Blakeholeburnhough) with 18 letters. The disagreement stems from how the OS map has written the names over the years. There seems to be only one house at the other one, but “our” hamlet actually has some minimal infrastructure. I think I know who wins that contest, even though Guinness World Records gave it to the other because sometimes the ‘foot’ part is separated on maps. By the way, it’s a geographical marking name: Cotton=probably an old nickname of a person, shope=a small narrow valley, burn=stream, foot=where a smaller stream meets a larger one.
It will be an early night. Nothing to do here in this lovely forest valley except listen to the wind, and there are no chairs in our cute pod - just a wood floor. Tomorrow will be long, really hilly, windy and off & on rainy, and we have to find a wild campsite. We‘re hoping to find a relatively sheltered spot on Windy Gyle (with that name, I’m not hopeful), or go five miles further to a mountain bothy. I’m going to very much enjoy the luxury of the wooden floor with the solid roof over my head tonight.
