I have some reservations about this

     The Coast2Coast Trail is an industry. Among other things, it has spawned those wonderful services that will move your stuff for you, daily, from one B&B to the next. However, to avail oneself of said service requires having things well planned ahead of time. It means having reservations.
     This is not my husband's style. He prefers travel that is more spontaneous. This is a guy who once bought an old van in Amsterdam and ended up in Afghanistan a year later. I, on the other hand, will happily sacrifice spontaneity, if it means not lugging a heavy backpack about.
     Yesterday we got a large envelope from the Royal Mail. Maybe it was delivered by a royal footman, I don't know, but it was in the mail box when I got home and inside were the luggage tags the baggage service will use when they pick up our bags each morning and drop them off at our next stop. I already love these people.
     It should be noted that this same service will also make all your reservations for you. Of course, there is a fee for that and speaking from personal experience, I'm sure they earn every penny. It's just that I did the research and the arithmetic and personally, I couldn't bear to pay the price for something I was pretty sure I could do myself.
     Partly because I have a real gift for making things more difficult than they need to be and a tendency to ponder the unknowables until I finally act on illogical impulse, making the reservations occupied me for more than a week and according to witnesses, made me a little crazy. At one point, I just decided to go with the most evocative names, the Dickensian ( Mrs Picklesby, the Bamblewick) or the verbal Viking remnants ( Ghyll Farm, Scarside Farm).
     Let me say, there are surmountable difficulties in doing this job yourself. It can be quite confusing to know exactly where a given pub is located and how far it is from the trail. There are places the all-seeing Google has not seen. It takes research and multiple emails.
     In some instances, it requires phone calls and it's worth noting, if you've never tried it, that you can call the UK for mere pennies through Google Voice, (the little phone icon I heretofore had never paid any attention to on the Gmail page. )
     What makes it do-able and even pleasant, are the very real, very nice people on the other end of the emails. Many of the innkeepers, quite legitimately, normally request a deposit to hold a reservation. (Or "secure a booking" if you prefer.) However, if they don't deal with credit cards, as many don't, it is difficult to comply from the US. Its astounding, really, in an age when communication is instantaneous, that moving money is so cumbersome. My personal check (in dollars) is not very useful, and bank transfer fees are prohibitive. Given the difficulties, many of these wonderful B&Bs waive the need for a deposit for their "overseas guests". It's amazing; I would totally understand if they just preferred not to deal with us at all, really.
     Thus we are left with two concerns: the somewhat problematic need to carry relatively large amounts of cash along with us to pay for lodging as we go. (For the record, there appear to be ATMs in Grassmere, Richmond and Kirkby Stephen.)   And secondly, that I didn't screw up the reservations, leaving us without a roof over our heads on a rainy night.