Penultimate Day

      We started yesterday up in the moors and descended into the picture-perfect Esk River valley.  

       The most vicarious excitement was provided by a new walking friend, Mathew, an expat Brit, who went to the pub for dinner with us last night.  Didn't I mention something about adders, the only venomous snake in the UK, last time I wrote?  It seems Mathew took a short cut through the heather yesterday morning and an adder bit his boot! He said he'd never seen an adder in 30 years and didn't really see this one either.... until it bit his boot.  Good thing he had on leather boots and wasn't shod like another trail legend, the Aussie-who-hikes-in-crocs.  (I know. It strains credulity, but people swear they've seen him. 

Share the trail

In addition to adders, one must beware of hens and ducks!        

      A B&B guy a few nights ago told me about another trail legend, an American woman hiking and carrying all her own gear. She reached the end of the trail at the North Sea ...and turned around and hiked all the way back to the start! He said he knew it really happened, because she stayed at his place going both ways.

Dream house 

Beggars Bridge at Glaisdale

      Today was a relaxed day with a relatively short walk, due to the incompetence of the lady who booked our accommodations (me), the realitive paucity of the same in the vicinity and the fact that the process did not begin until the last week in July.  (Some people make arrangements six months to a year ahead. Imagine being that organized!)  

      The town we find ourselves in tonight is Grosmont, which is pronounced "Grow-mont" in a token gesture to its supposed (by me) Norman antecedents. Aside from the fact that we didn't walk very far, it's a great place to stay; the B&B is in an art gallery! 

      There's an old railroad station here and by chance today was a big day: a celebration of old steam trains. The center of town was swarming with avid choochoo train fans,  mostly men with cameras and their indulgent wives.  They must have all had train sets when they were boys.  The locomotives really were quite impressive though, blasting enormous clouds of steam and smoke and  blowing their whistles as they chugged in and out of the station.

      Tomorrow we climb back up to the moors and head for the sea, our final day on the Coast to Coast.  It all seems pretty easy in retrospect, (although this may be a magical memory trick.) I'll be sad to reach the sea and the end of our little adventure.  But there's not much chance we'll turn around and do it all over again in reverse.