Day 8 Coast to Coast Kirkby Stephen to Keld

Day 8 pictures
My night’s sleep was simply terrible.

The rogue clock

My little garret faced the town church clock that chimed the quarter hour. Every quarter of an hour you are reminded of your insomnia. You start to anticipate the chime, and when it comes you are surprised. The adrenaline rush is enough to delay sleep further. Add to this a flattening smoke detector battery, that beeped intermittently and I think you get the picture.
Simple Kleenex tissue ear plugs are not that effective.
In spite of this, I feel well for our attack on what are called the Nine Standards, some cairn like stone features on the Yorkshire Dales whose history is unknown.
The views from here are also supposed to be pretty good.
Well, the low cloud and mist had other ideas, and our climb out of Kirkby Stephen gets whiter and whiter.

Decision Point

We finally come to a decision point where we can walk on to these interesting features, or take another path.
We take another path and soon, in the mist, find ourselves off track.
A quick conference with other walkers and a quick look at the GPS tells us we have wandered off to the left of our path.
Path regained we walk on, and in the mist, once again, wander off our proper track, this time to the right.
Our group has to do a 90 degree turn to regain our path.
The safe route in bad weather has to transit a road for about three kilometres, so that’s what we do.
After a short walk we enter the Yorkshire Dales, and leave Cumbria and the Lakes District.

Ravenshead Farm

It’s then a walk, in the misting rain and wind down one of the innumerable becks to Ravenshead a farm famous for its tea, coffee and scones that the wife of the farmer puts on for walkers, at a cost.
Of course she has now stopped doing it, for some reason, so we walk on.
It’s downhill from here to Keld a small village with the obligatory stone houses and the obligatory pub.
We have to call the taxi from Kirkby Stephen to pick us up and take us back to our B and B.
Helen, the taxi driver, is very chatty and regales us with her life in Sydney married to a mad traffic controller.
Not a great combination I would have though!
Once home it’s a rush for the shower, then across to the church gallery, which is the only place I can get a wi-fi connection. I have half an hour and the blog us uploaded however with few pictures.
This is the first day I didn’t put on my rain jacket. That doesn’t mean I didn’t get wet just that I didn’t feel the need for it as it was quite warm, and the wind didn’t seem too chill.
However my boots were soaked once again. We use reams of newspaper to try and dry them each day/night.
My orthotics which I tried to burn some days ago are coping, however I think they are delaminating, and my only hope is they last until my return home.