“To walkers whose liking is for high places and rough terrain, this will seem the dullest part of the whole walk; those who believe that the earth is flat will be mightily encouraged on this section. The scenery is 100% rural, and all is tidily and pleasantly arranged, but the views are restricted to the road and the fields adjoining: there is no distance to attract the eye, no stimulating prospect apart from the faraway outline of the Cleveland Hills, too remote yet to excite. You have heard of Yorkshire’s broad acres: here they are in person, interminable, neatly patterned by clipped thorn hedges or wooden fences, but never, never a stone wall: a foreign land indeed.”
“….tedium grows apace and one plods onwards mechanically, head down, thinking nostalgically of places left behind: Lakeland, limestone country, the Dales…..(there is) nothing of interest to anyone but farmers”
-Alfred Wainright
Today was to be an easy day….and the most boring, according to AW himself, as you can read above. The latter proved to be correct, the former debatable. We left our beloved Swale River early in the walk as it left us to travel south, as we continued east. A confusing start (four signs pointing in four different directions) saw us plod along flat fields, with not a stone wall in sight. Today’s views were to be mainly of wheat fields and lane ways and most of our swaledale sheep companions had grown into cows, and even those were few and far on the ground. One of the towns passed through was Catterick. There’s nothing much but a racecourse here, but it has a somewhat interesting past. An old Roman fort town since about 80AD, it has been inhabited for about 5000 years. Its name comes from its Roman name of Cattaractonium, in honour of the swirling Swale waters that run through it. Bolton-On-Swale also had to be visited. It’s at the local 14th century church that you can find a monument to one Henry Jenkins. Henry lived a few hundred years ago and did nothing too special in his time. His fame comes from the fact that he lived for 169 years. So they say. No one really knows, and there is no start or finish date on his monument. Oh well, you have to take a photo, don’t you?!
We then wandered off track for about a mile to find Joan’s tea rooms in Scorton. There had little signs along the track, but we think Joan must have gone out of business as we found not sight nor sound of her and settled instead on the local pub which was actually quite posh. We felt a bit skanky to be going in, but it wasn’t wasn’t going to stop us. Just perhaps a second of contemplation. No more.
Soon we were back on track to tackle the longest road section of the whole walk. Joints were already aching, but with Jon’s (our leader on part one of the walk) words in our head, “You’ve got to keep peddling”, we trudged on. I have no idea why I was falling apart today. Perhaps lack of dinner, or perhaps it was just the fact that the whole walk was dead flat. I find that really tough on the joints as your body is in the same position the whole time, the same muscles being pounded. It may also have something to do with where the mind is. So, with a metaphoric slap about the face, off we went.
Lunch was basically on the side of a narrow lane before the final pull into Danby Wiske. We (well I did, anyway) dragged our foot sore, leg sore and hip sore sorry bodies into town and collapsed at the freshly painted pub. After a quarter (yes, you read that correctly!) pint of cider, I was as good as under the table.
XXX
