The Walk - Stage 8 - Kirkby Stephen to Keld

Happy retirement Rand and Colleen. Sorry I’m missing your party today. You are gifted teachers, prayer warriors, stalwart in times of trouble, encouragers, passionate about the Word, selfless givers of your time resources, and energy, loyal friends, spiritual sister sojourner, ministers to so many. Those are just a few of the things that come to mind. I’m sure you know, true servants of the Lord never retire, they just go another direction. I know He will continue to speak and work through you as He guides you on the path planned for you. 

“ The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Love you and congratulations!

The main object today is the crossing of the watershed of Britain on Nine Standards Rigg. Because of the bogginess of the terrain and the threat of excessive erosion, the National Park has plotted three routes across for different seasons. The blue route is the recommended way for this time of the year and the one we will take, up and over 2,172' unless the weather is bad, in which case we will take the green route. The routes do not vary greatly in length or ascent. The main consideration is the condition of the terrain. 

We begin our day with what is now becoming a very familiar, yet very tedious routine. Unpacking, repacking, apply lotions and potions, filling water bladders, restocking snacks, and carrying the bags down narrow steep steps for the bag collecting fairies….

It is 43 deg with a 60% chance of rain as we leave this morning so we don our fleece and rain gear. However, it is not long before the sun pops through the clouds and we are shedding rain coats as well as fleece. 

After a light breakfast of scones and grabbing a sandwich for lunch, we bid Kirkby Stephen a cheery farewell and head off across Frank’s Bridge and towards the village of Hartley.

As we leave town, Jo Anne has a sit on the hand carved sheep bench. Apparently if you sit on the bench it’s reputed to increase fertility.

Start of our walk

And steps of course

Sun rising over the river Eden. 

River Eden - as Wordsworth put it, 'fetched from paradise and rightfully borne'.

The source of the River Eden is high up on the slopes of Mallerstang, on Black Fell Moss (don't you just love these names?). It's also the head of the Ure and the Swale, the river that will shortly accompany our walk for a good part of the remainder of its journey.

Sign showing the distance and direction to the start and finish of our walk. 

Walking the dogs. Aren’t they beautiful dogs?

First kissing gate

And second 

This little sign is at the junction where there is confusion as to which path to take. 

Beautiful trails 

Hartley is a delightful place on the road to nowhere. 

Neil Hanson, Walking through Eden, says 'a company of limes by a stream, silver birches a little bridge, a few houses below the grandeur of the Pennines, this is Hartley, a quiet spot under a hill over 2000 feet high, with nine great stone cairns centuries old'. That describes it pretty well.

So we were between this sign (which was quite confusing)

And this sign, looking at our map, when a lady stopped her car and said,

‘It’s that way.’ Obviously she was very used to seeing coast to coasters scratching their heads at that particular spot. 

I’m going to apologize right now for the number of photographs and lengthy post. Skim through them if you must. I just couldn’t leave very many out. Once again I am at a loss for words at the beauty of God’s creation.

This little guy really wanted out of the gate. 

You must go “dead slow” over the cattle ‘grid’ (and no, that’s not misspelled). 

Jo Anne looks like she’s walking and reading a book, but it’s the map book 😁. 

Sign telling us which route to take over the bogs depending on what time of year it is to protect against erosion. 

Jo Anne said she needed to find a rock or something to sit a bit and rest her knee. 

About 30 seconds later I asked, will this do? 

We commenced an immediate 5 mile uphill climb, during which we were overtaken by a couple of other hikers. 

We were breathing out of our eyeballs (and any other orifice that would allow in oxygen), but they sauntered by with their hands in their pockets without breaking a sweat, while I was using my walking poles to leverage every pound of this tired old body up that hill. 

Jo Anne trudging up the hill

If you zoom in you can see the Nine Standards Rigg over my right shoulder. 

Taking another breather

Feeling suitably pathetic we soldiered on, admiring the expansive views over the fields we'd walked the day before last. Ahead of us loomed the Nine Standards Rigg, nine huge stone cairns “stone men” that you can see for miles around. I have no idea why they are there or what craziness got all the stones there, but they make a very lovely feature. There are many theories: border markers, built by the Roman army to look like troops from a distance and confuse the enemy. It seems no one really knows. 

You can see it got cold again up top with the wind blowing. 

The Nine Standards sit directly on the British watershed, the great north-south divide sending waters one way to the Irish Sea (the beginning of our walk), and the other to the North Sea (the end of our journey).

The wind is really loud in this video so you might want to turn it down or mute it completely. 

On a clear day there are few places that have a wider, more inspiring panorama of the massive, sprawling beauty of the wild moorlands of Northern England than Nine Standards. It is the most far-reaching view, extending from the mounds of Cross Fell, the Dun Fells and Mikle Fell in the north, to the lofty escarpment of Wild Boar Fell across the upper Vale of Eden. Certainly a place to take a break, look back the way we have come, to the now hazy blue Lakeland heights. From here we head into the Dales, and Swaledale in particular, and it would be a mistake to believe it is now downhill all the way, however, there is no higher ground on the C2C between here and the east coast.  

"The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them." Psalm 104:8

The views from the top were spectacular and we could see the weather rolling in. It looked wet, so we scurried off across the peat bogs.

Due to erosion, they’ve added these huge stones for the first bit down. 

Closeup of one of the stones. 

I’m standing with one foot in Cumbria and one in Yorkshire. You can see the muddy mess we’ll be facing. 

We are taking the blue route down. 

We were warned about the bogs, but nothing can prepare you for quite how boggy the top of the Pennines can be. We’d put our poles down, tentatively feeling for depth and several times they would sink down to the handle of the pole. It became a game of finding tufts of grass to hop onto. The problem was that not all grass is created equal and some ‘grass’ was actually some kind of strange bog weed that floats on puddles. Suffice to say we got very wet and very muddy but we laughed a lot. 

That was until Jo Anne sank in the peat bog up to her thighs and couldn’t get her leg out no matter what we tried. She was finally able to crawl out on her hands and knees. It got much worse after that picture above but I was trying to help her get out so no time for taking photos. 

You can see from this photo how deep she went in. Every step after that was a squishy peat boggy mess in her boots. 

Finding our way also proved challenging as the marker posts were few and far between and when you did find one, there was just the faintest trace of blue paint to let us know that we were indeed on the right path.

Unusual orange/red grass

Closeup of the grass

There’s a very funny story about what happened here and I really wish it had been caught on video, because it’s just not the same in the telling. Jo Anne is working her way across another boggy area and about to climb a tall bank to get where I am. First of all, on a previous climb up, she gave me a push from the back side and I went tumbling face first over the step up. Then when it came time for her to get over this bit, I held out the walking poles for her to grab hold of and for me to pull. She said don’t stop pulling or I’ll fall backward so I kept pulling and she came tumbling face first over the edge. When she did, she let go of the poles I was pulling on with all my might and I went flying backward onto the ground. I was laying on my backpack and we were both laughing so hard. I felt like a turtle on its back that couldn’t roll over. We finally stopped laughing long enough to get ourselves up off the ground to continue through the bogs. I think the place we landed was the only dry spot for miles around. Throughout the rest of the day, one of us would remember and start laughing again. 

A tarn in a glacial cirque (middle of the pic)

Heading down 

We listened to grouse and grouse hunters most of the day. There’s a grouse sitting right in the middle of this photo. 

And in flight to the middle left of this one. 

We stood listening to these two grouse carrying on a conversation of sorts. It was so unusual.

Finally we escaped the bogs for a bit and walked alongside the river Swale, where we chose a pretty spot for lunch.

Don’t know where you ate lunch but this was heavenly. I’m sorry I couldn’t get the video to load so you could get the full effect of the waterfall. 

Not this (heavenly) tuna with salad on it, but the location. 

We could see the clouds quickly blowing in, so we ate fast and kept on moving. 

A short walk later we stumbled upon what has got to be the most idyllic spot in the UK. Ravenseat Farm, is home to the Yorkshire Shepherdess. You may have heard of her and her brood of 9 children from the age of 5 to 21.  

A group of grouse hunters getting ready to go out with their dogs. 

We arrived at this farm, with a bubbling brook running through the grounds. 

We were entranced as we walked up to the little tea cart. A child greeted us and asked us if we’d like scones and tea. We said yes please, feeling very much as though we’d stumbled into an Enid Blyton book. If you’re not familiar, she wrote the Little Noddy series, featuring the adventures of Little Noddy, Mr. Plod the policeman, Big Ears, and other characters of Toyland Village, as well as many other children’s books.  

The youngest girl was eating something that looked like a crumpet and I asked what it was. She said in her very proper English accent, I really don’t know. The older sister said it was a bannock. Their mum had just returned from Scotland and was trying a new recipe. 

We took a seat at one of the benches, enjoyed the sun while watching as roosters cavorted and tucked into delicious, warm home made scones with jam and cream. It is the simplest things that taste the best. You can keep your Michelin starred restaurants. Give me a squashed tuna mayo sandwich in a field by a waterfall and a scone with jam and cream on a bench, and all is well with the world. 

The ochre color comes from historic mining operations. The iron ochre reminded me of carrot soup gone bad (or ‘gone-off’ as the Brit’s would say). 

Trails leading into Keld. 

“For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood, in every spring there is a different green.” JRR Tolkien

We bid the farm a sad farewell and continued a very pleasant walk along the river Swale, passing countless stone barns. The river widened and was dotted with waterfalls, before we arrived at Keld, a village that time forgot, with quaint stone buildings dotting the narrow road.

Keld was virtually unknown outside the dale. It is an ancient settlement of Scandinavian origin, its name, from the Norse, means 'a place by the river'. It lies at the head of Swaledale, a dale of fast flowing streams and impressive waterfalls. The river Swale runs through Keld, into a limestone gorge, surrounded by woodland before it meanders through some of the most pristine, unspoiled meadows in England. 

The C2C has brought a few benefits, in the way of B&Bs, hotels and pubs, to the area.

In Keld, Dick Alderson, better known as Neddy Dick, was the well-known character. Neddy's claim to fame was his ability to make music from stones. Apparently, while climbing near Kisdon Force one day, he dislodged a sliver of rock and heard a distinct musical ring as it fell against other rocks. Before long he had found enough rocks to compose a 'limestone scale', on which he would accompany his own singing. His great ambition, alas unfulfilled, was to go on tour with his geological, one-man band piled on a donkey cart. 😂

Keld marks the half-way point on the C2C, and a feeling of great accomplishment overwhelms us. We have WALKED half way across England! It boggles the mind. 

Our inn for tonight is Keld Lodge, which sits at the crossroads of three renowned long distance hikes: C2C, The Pennine Way and the Herriot Way. It was originally built as a shooting lodge in 1860.

It has a drying room where we put our boggy boots and Jo Anne puts her wet clothes. 

Views from our room

Keld isn’t really a hamlet at all. It’s B&Bs, lodges and inns scattered over the hills. There is nowhere to eat other than your own lodging.  Fortunately, ours had excellent food. 

A starter of vegetable soup and bread. 

I had the salmon cakes over salad. 

Jo Anne had the roast chicken over potatoes in a bacon and herb sauce.

She had syrup sponge with custard for dessert. 

I had the lemon tart. 

After dinner, we adjourned to our room to blog, journal and read before crawling into bed in hopes of a good nights rest. 

Today’s stats:

37,021 steps

14.3 miles

93 floors

Over 3,000’ total ascent

~8 hours 

Wainwrights walk has already proven to be the most challenging and invigorating of all my long-distance walks. We feel privileged and amazed that we are able to continue, step by step, on this, our memorial sojourn.

"For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth- the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!" Amos 4:13