Expectations
This day will challenge our stated goal of not setting foot in a vehicle during the walk, though not as much as the next day–at least today’s detour will be downhill!
The official route stays on top of the moor, and most people call the hotel in Great Broughton for a ride from the top. It looks like there’s a reasonable trail down from the moor to Back Lane, by-passing what a few car-avoiding bloggers have said is a miserable and dangerous walk down the main road.
11.87 miles from Park House in Ingleby Cross to The Wainstones Hotel in Great Broughton.
Realities
Another baaaaad internet, so no big update. Good 12 mile walk (no cars!) and fun dinner with D’s brother A, wife L, and friend from college days M.
More whenever wi-fi works faster!
Update: I’m sitting in the guest house at Sevenford House at 5:30am on the day we’ll walk to Glaisdale. Internet speed is decent, but the only way to get a decent connection to the wi-fi router is to perch the laptop precariously on the back of the couch where it can “see” the roof of the main house. (This brings to mind a conversation between D and me that left me in stitches. D: “We should run a Bed and Breakfast. It would be a perfect use of our skills!” Me: “Huh?” D: “Yes, I could reboot the router and you could do everything else.” Hmmmm.)
Anyway, I think I can get some blog updating done.
We loved Park House in Ingleby Cross. Lovely bedrooms but more importantly, wonderful hosts who seem to truly love welcoming people into their home.
We were the only guests, so it was just the six of us at breakfast—one of the rare times that the Ls and Cs have actually stayed in the same accommodation and therefore shared breakfast.
Leaving Park House, there was a short period on a gently sloping track in woodland before doubling back on a path Stedman describes as “relentlessly uphill”. We found this baffling—it was definitely uphill, but my goodness compared to many other climbs, it was nothing.
And oh gosh the reward at the top! A clearing showing an expansive view to the west across the Vale of Mowbray. We walked that—what a sense of accomplishment.
D got out the drone and buzzed about a bit, then we headed along the moor. By then we were following the Cleveland Way, most of which is—remarkably—roughly paved with enormous stones.
Here and there the heather was blooming. The moor must be breathtaking when it’s fully in bloom, which I imagine would be within 2-4 weeks or so.
We started keeping our eyes open for D’s brother A, who would be joining us for dinner and was planning to meet us on the trail. D and M walked briskly ahead of the rest of us and met A at the high point on one moor. L and C caught up and then we continued on with our sights set on Lordstones Cafe.
By the time we arrived it was raining. The inside part was heaving with people, with an hour wait for food. The outside portion had seating, but all the table with functioning umbrellas were full. We could see one table with a closed umbrella, which turned out to be quite broken, but fixable:
RL and FL arrived, with FL declaring his day done and arranging a taxi to Great Broughton.
The café has a shop from which we extracted food quickly (no-one wanted to wait an hour in the rain for the main menu.) D and L had a steak and ale pie, M bought a huge loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese, which he demolished. We all had tea.
By the end of the meal, the rain was mostly over.
The rest of the moorland portion consisted of climbing up one moor and down, then back up again, twice. D and A chose to do that. The rest of us kept on more of a traverse. That meant we reached the point where we turned down the hill to Great Broughton much sooner than D and A. I kept my eyes open for D’s college friend Mark who would also be joining us for dinner, knowing that it was quite a while since I’d last seen him and not sure I’d recognize him. But no worries—even from a fair distance I realized the man walking toward me was Mark. He was happy to meet us right at the point where the path was heading more steeply up the moor and immediately concluded he’d walk back with us rather than continuing further up to meet D and A.
The Wainstones Hotel had been the least favorite lodging to date. It’s a fairly non-descript, typical English hotel, which alone would merely have meant it was not memorable.
But the heat in our room fixed that. Despite the outside temperature being pleasant, the room was very warm. There was only a tiny opening window and no ability to generate air flow through it because it opened onto a small courtyard. We eventually discovered that the floor of the bathroom and some of the carpeted area was warm, as if via underfloor heating but unintentionally. It all made for an uncomfortable night. On the plus side, when I mentioned it in the morning, the manager took the feedback really well—the awful manager at the Buck Hotel in Reeth could learn a lot from him!
We really should have requested to switch rooms as soon as we arrived, but getting a drink in seemed more pressing, and once we’d had a drink, it just didn’t seem as pressing.
Eventually the full party was in place: the Cs, the Ls, A plus wife L, and Mark. We had a nice dinner, notable more for the company than the food.
