Kevin Downes: Not 'The', but 'A' Coast to Coast Walk, Aug 2018: Day 6

Total ascent, 478m (1568ft).

Tuesday, 7th August.

So yesterday’s evening meal was not quite what I had envisaged in the blog. I was not dropped off at the ‘bottom of the hill’ Crown Hotel to be picked up later, though the first part is true. I was in fact accompanied into the pub and invited to eat with my landlord Mike (or Malc, I still don’t know despite several people including him saying his name). Now I’m not the world’s best small-talker but he was on another level, responding to pretty much everything I said with “Aye” and nothing else, in a friendly manner it must be said. He did though have a few opinions to share on certain subjects:

On ordering dinner: “I’ll have the chicken same as I ‘ad this afternoon, wi’ chips this time.”

On schoolchildren: “I don’t know why you can’t just cuff ‘em round the ear any more.”

On his grandson: “He’s the apple o’ me eye.”

On TV comedy duos: “They’re dropping like flies. I wonder wha’ ‘appened to Mike and Bernie Winters?”

By the time our meals had arrived a few of the other locals had turned up, and what a bunch they were; all friendly and all very, very odd. The oldest and most bedraggled ordered a pint with a whisky chaser; the chaser was down in one, the pint in not many more. They spent ages discussing a new road sign that had gone up along the lane at Stean (“What’s t’ bugger fooer?”), before Mike / Malc asked if any of them knew what had happened to Mike and Bernie Winters. It was only after getting back to my room that I discovered that Barry of the Chuckle Brothers had died, which I think made sense of some of the evening’s conversation. To you, Barry.

Breakfast, made by Mike / Malc, was at 7:30 in a large, dour room joined to the pub (I was not sorry that it had been shut last night), with antlers and photos of grouse shoots all over the walls. The tables weren’t very clean and the coffee was self-service instant, but the food was good. He had offered me an early start and I’d accepted to try and get an earlier finish for once, I had washing to do!

Mike / Malc was more chatty this morning, and gave me a bit of his background. He had been an engineer, then a farmer, then a (grouse) gamekeeper and was now a publican and will be “till I drop dead.” Then his son will take over the pub. He has obviously done his time and been fairly successful (judging from his car at least!) and can not envisage life without work. I liked him and his friends as symbols of a completely different lifestyle that still exists, just. A bit like the antlers.

The early start may have been intended to enable an early finish, but as it turned out the cloudy / foggy forecast was in reality a sunny, hot day, right from my 8:15 start. The first 2 miles of ‘down dale and up hill’ took an hour, the first because I wasn’t concentrating and took a wrong turn after 5 minutes, the second because the ‘up hill’ was a long and steep ascent up the other side of the valley.

Looking back across the valley to Middlesmoor (in distance below skyline).

I’d been looking forward to the next 5 or 6 miles just from looking at it on the map, a chance to stride out across open moorland for a couple of hours. I’d hoped that it would be a sea of heather for as far as the eye could see and...

...result!!!

There was open access land on either side of my path but it was closed because of fire risk, and there were several sections where the heather and bracken was black and charred from fires that hadn’t spread far.

I think it takes a certain type of person to enjoy walking across terrain like this for ages and ages. I love it but I totally understand why people would think it boring or unattractive. What certainly wasn’t boring was coming across an adder in the middle of the path. I hadn’t seen one since I did the Pembrokeshire Coast Path in 1990something, but recognised the zigzag pattern. I took a dreadful photo and only slightly better video before it slithered into the heather.

Sadly videos won’t upload, so here’s a dreadful photo of the adder / oversized worm.

Moorland, don’t you just love it? Don’t you? Really?

I left the moor, descended into farmland and that was it for the Yorkshire Dales. I could see my next interesting target, the North York Moors, in the distance. Before that I have an irritating flat gap to cross but I’ll complain about that tomorrow. However before the irritating flat gap I had a pleasant, though increasingly hot, walk through fields to Masham. Masham is fascinating (to me anyway!) because it is a very small town containing two famous breweries, Theakston’s and Black Sheep. I must say though that the end result tastes much better than the brewing process smells and I could not live here, pretty as it is.

Theakston’s brewery - smelly first, tasty later.

I’d known it was quite a way from Middlesmoor to Masham, but as I was leaving early had devised a plan as follows:

Save the biscuits from the room, order a full breakfast, hide the bacon and some bread to make a butty, stop on the moor to eat saved food for elevenses, get to Masham for 1pm for a cream tea, relax for a couple of hours, go to the post office and send home my used maps and totally unnecessary second fleece, get to my accommodation by 4, do hand washing, chill out.

And with only a couple of minor amendments (I keep taking ‘interesting’ detours, hence the fact today was a couple of miles more than planned so I finished just before 5) that’s exactly what happened.

So here I am in a pub waiting for my meal to arrive. But this is no ordinary village I’m staying in. Bookworms and filmgoers, this will chill you to the bone, but the name of the village I’m staying in is...