I woke really early
this morning, looking through the curtains to see a beautiful sunny morning and
clear blue skies, “that’ll be the map holder” I thought...
I packed up all our
bits and sorted the bags out for the day, whilst putting my walking shorts on.
I had the type of walking pants which convert in to shorts, and still not being
convinced by the weather packed the legs into my rucksack, just in case.
We went down for
breakfast at 8am, having cereal and toast and chatting to Dave and Val for a
short while. The breakfast room had a glass roof, like a conservatory, I kept
glancing up at the blue sky, no clouds at all, thinking I’ll wake up in a moment
and it’s be raining as usual I’m sure.
We finished
breakfast, packed up the overnight bag and left in reception for Sherpa to
collect, checked out and hit the road. Before long we both thought we’d better
put some sun cream on, the temperature was quickly climbing as we headed
towards the village of Marske. The village of Marske really feels like it
should have a little coffee shop, or even just a shop, maybe just a bench? None
of those, on a lovely day like today it’s a lovely picturesque village, but
offering little to the passing walker.
We continued to
press on before finding a little bench just as we left the village; we took the
chance to have a sit down, quick drink of water and a biscuit. A couple of
other walkers passed as we did asking “any cafe’s or coffee shops?” “nop” I
responded, looking equally as disappointed.
The walk then
continues on the road for a short while before crossing some fields towards the
climb up Clapgate Beck. Once at the top of here the views back are great, blue
sunny skies, green fields and woodland, with car windscreens twinkling as the
drive along the A6108 road, although far enough away to maintain the
tranquillity.
Looking at the map
we were perhaps only an hour or so away from Richmond, we continued to walk
along the high level walk of Applegarth scar, as we did we met up with Paul and
Tony (the brothers), Tony had fashioned a makeshift hat from a t-shirt in an
attempt to keep the sun from his head, the weather was now becoming really
quite hot and we were glad to arrive at Whittcliffe Wood and some much needed
shade.
After a nice, and
cooler walk through the woods we began to descend into Richmond, we could see
great views of Richmond castle, and we could even see tomorrows walk stretching
out across the Vale of Mowbray beyond, with a hazy outline of the Cleveland
hills just about visible, confirming what we already knew, tomorrow is a long
& flat day.
Despite us stopping
for lunch just outside Richmond we arrived in the town at 13:00, really early,
so had a coffee and an ice cream in the village square before meeting up with
Sarah’s mum and dad Lyne and Bill who
had come to visit us today. We took the chance to have a walk around the shops,
with Sarah’s eye for a bargain picking up some t-shirts from an outdoor shop at
a really good price, fresh clothes!
Me and Sarah then
headed to our accommodation to get changed, of course arriving so early meant
we’d arrived before our overnight bag, so I had a quick shower with the complementary
soap, whilst Sarah decided to wait until the bag arrived, one of the few
benefits of having no hair means I’m fairly low maintenance in that respect.
After a quick chat
with Wendy, who had pressed on to Bolton on Swale today in order to shave some
off the next day’s long schedule, then caught a bus back to Richmond. We headed back up to the village to meet
Sarah’s Mum and Dad and visited a couple of bars to sample the delights of
Richmond, which felt like a city given how remote this route is. We found a
nice pub for a meal and all enjoyed a lovely evening meal “steak pies &
chips!” in Richmond. It was a lovely summers evening, sunny and warm, with very
little wind.
We headed back early
so Sarah could get showered and we could sort the gear out for tomorrow, we
knew we had a particularly long day ahead of us and so wanted an early start.
So after watching the weather forecast which showed fine weather again we
turned in for the night at about 9:30pm.
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