Coast to Coast - Day Six

Day Six: Shap to Kirkby Stephen (21 miles).

Looking back to the Lakeland Fells from the Westmoreland plataeu

After the hardest day of the walk so far, what you need is a nice short leg. No such luck - we had a 21-mile slog across the Westmoreland plateau and Eden Valley. The Liverpool girls were walking just eight miles to the village of Orton - how I envied them.

Although long, the route contains no major challenges and it was an opportunity for recovery from sore knees and blisters. David has no blisters and as soon as he feels a tender spot, he slaps a Compeed over it. That's clearly the way to do it; I think I left it too late and my blisters were already too well developed by the time I used Compeed. Anyway, I've donated the pack I bought to David and he is supplying me with big patches of plaster, which I'm using to protect the burst blisters under my toes from shredding any further. I'm securing the plasters with bandage tape and it's working pretty well.

If I were doing the walk with the knowledge I now have, I'd make it a three-week project and allow more time for diversions and sightseeing. Today was a good example. There was limestone pavement, prehistoric circles and burial mounds, views to the Pennines and back to the Lakeland Fells, birds to hear and see ... but no time to explore.

We set off early and soon crossed our first major marker - the M6 motorway, which seemed excessively hurried and busy to our walk-tuned minds. Crossing the country off the beaten track makes it seem very strange and busy when you enter a town or encounter something like the M6.

Our wombat fact of the day was the collective noun for these creatures. Apparently, it's a wisdom of wombats. Sue may have made that up, but it was the best wombat fact so far!

I was well weary by the time we reached Kirkby Stephen, which is the largest town we've yet encountered and a busy little place full of guesthouses, pubs, restaurants and a railway station. Sue's B&B was on the way into town and her landlady was outside when we arrived. She recommended the Black Bull for a meal and we arranged to meet there later. Our accommodation was in the town centre, so we had a little further to walk, but we found it easily enough. Landlady Barbara White was fantastic, she greeted us with tea and crumpets and nothing was too much trouble. I asked if Kirkby Stephen was in Yorkshire and she told me it was in the old county of Westmoreland, sadly no longer is existence having been combined with Cumberland into the new area called Cumbria. Barbara has done the coast to coast walk herself.

The Black Bull was good - more Black Sheep - and we also discovered it was quiz night, so after eating, we put together a team called Coasters International, comprising David and I, Sue and the two Dutch girls. We made a storming start thanks to a round on London where I knew all the answers, Saskia and Lysa kept us in the game with their knowledge of pop music, but then we came unstuck on British No1 records and ended up third. It was good fun and our last night with Saskia and Lysa, who were back to the Netherlands in the morning.