Yesterday we split up after Grasmere, with 5 Pebbles taking the low road from Grisedale Tarn through the valley, 4 taking the medium road up St. Sunday’s Crag, and Moe and I undertaking Helvellyn.  Except for some reason Moe is incapable of remembering that name.  He insisted we climb, “… Van Helen is it?”  It quickly evolved, and now we simply refer to it as Van Halen.  “I hear it’s rocky,” Seth added.

Van Halen is the 3rd highest point in England at 3120′, less than 100′ shy of the highest, Scafell Pike.  But it’s the highest along the coast-to-coast Wainwright Walk we’re doing.  And since Moe and I are used to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, we’ll take what we can get.  The two edges heading down from the summit, of which we chose Swirral rather than Striding to avoid a backtrack, are breathtaking knife edges that I’ve not seen anywhere in the Whites.

Finally having uploaded all the photos from the first 5 days off my camera, including today’s hike over Kidsty Pike to Bampton Grange, I’ve noticed something peculiar.  There are more photos of sheep than of fellow Pebbles.  So in lieu of a photo of Moe and me on Van Halen, I hope you appreciate the more representative sheep who accomplished the same summit perhaps only moments before us.  Or he lives there.

Onward to Orton tomorrow, with a stop for lunch in Shap on the way!

Another long day on the trail (from Bampton Grange), another long night at the pub (in Orton), another short blog post.  I think a bullet list of random thoughts — not unlike the headlines at the Shap co-op, where we also bought random lunch items — is warranted.

• I’ve hiked over 71 miles in the 6 days so far.  Some Pebbles have opted for alternative trails (or even boats, buses, and hitch hiking) at various stages, but then Wainwright himself took a lot of buses, too.
• Eric stayed in the room that Wainwright slept in for 40 years at the Water View Inn in Patterdale.  Eric claims to have slept through any ghostly visits, but I don’t think we’re getting the full story.
• Ealish’s father, Charles, will join us in Kirkby Stephen tomorrow, after being delayed by some unavoidable work in the Middle East this week.  He is fashionably late, but now the party can start!
• Seth worked crowd control as we crossed a pasture full of cows and calves (and one white bull with giant nads) that had blocked our exit from said pasture.  The bull hid himself in the center of the herd, trying to go unnoticed by us, while one of the more curious cows came up close to check out my camera.  Only after we were all safely over the stone wall did the bull come out of hiding and show that cow the back side of his pimp hoof.  He was seriously pissed at her for coming over to say hi to me!
• There was a treasure chest of refreshments, a sort of honor bar for hikers, at the entrance to Shap Abbey.  I got my drink on (a £1 Strongbow cider) earlier than ever this morning, and in the heat I really felt it!  Buzzed but still able to navigate…
• I can’t say Shap except in my “Shaft!” voice.  You’ll have to ask the other Pebbles if it’s getting annoying yet.  …  Shap!
• I had a lot of time to practice the guitar today while waiting for he group to recollect.  I also got sunburned a bit on my knees and arms.  Did I mention this is the best string of gorgeous weather ever experienced in Northern England?  (By me at least.  Everything else is irrelevant.)  This weekend we may get to see what it’s supposed to be like up here.
• I ate a Terry’s chocolate orange for lunch.   Despite the thousands of exercise calories burned every day, I’m still gaining weight, I just know it.  It’s the over-sized breakfast, normal lunch, après-walk beers, and pudding that seem to be implicated.
• There is no end to how cute lambs are.
• Boobs do not anger mountain gods.  But maybe they better caught your attention than a photo of more sheep?

We made it to Kirkby Stephen today, 7/16 of the way to the east coast, and where Ealish’s father, Charles, joined us.  Starting tomorrow morning we need to have our suitcases packed and ready for pickup by 8:15am instead of the usual 9:30+, so I need to go to bed and wake up early!  But I did want to give a shout out to my personal outfitters for this journey.

Harry and Felicity provided me with the following items for my birthday to ensure my success on the trail:

• compass, green, leaf-shaped
• flashlights, LED, assorted colors
• length of rope, black
• journal, with pre-written prompt

Our innkeeper in Patterdale told us about his daughter, Rachel, who has hiked the C2C three times, first at age 7.  I think it’s too much to ask that my children be as passionate about hiking as I am, but I do hope we’ll share some hobby that brings us together like Ma (their Nanny) and I are now.  In the meantime, they’re so sweet for supporting me in my hobby.

I love you, kiddos!  xoxox

All is well in Keld, so don’t let my link bait headline worry you.  This is the view out my bedroom window, so you can imagine the worst crisis being that telephone booth lit up all night.  It was an adorable nightlight, really.

Yesterday when we stopped at Nine Standards on the way from Kirkby Stephen to Keld, where nine giant stone cairns had been placed perhaps as a medieval scarecrow to keep marauding Scots at bay, I realized that the hike was nearly half over and I hadn’t accomplished everything I had set out to do, such as write a paragraph long sentence into this blog.

I also meant to collect my thoughts about the new non-profit to which I intend to dedicate time this year, and I hadn’t even started that yet.  I have books to read that have sat in my pack untouched.  The guitar has only made a few brief appearances during particularly long hiking breaks.  Something had to be done!

I made a run for it after lunch, quite literally if you ask any of the hikers I passed on the trail, and arrived at Butt House in Keld at 3pm.  (Compare that to 8 and 9pm arrivals on other days in the Lakes District.)  After bathing, I got right to work in Keynote starting a pitch slide deck for the non-profit.  Then after dinner I read for 3 solid hours, a book I adore called Us by David Nicholls.  I skipped blogging last night because I couldn’t put the book down.  And on the guitar front, I at least memorized some chord progressions while speeding down the trail, even if I can’t play while in motion.  (Maybe I can work up to that skill level?)

Crisis averted, my life (oops, I mean my hike) is back on track!  Half done, and having a blast.

This is not posed. It’s just what my side of the “dorm room” looked like when I woke up this morning, and Ma said it should be a blog post.

Seth, Tim, and I reached Richmond early today, with pints in hand before 2pm, a new record! Now to find a post office so I can show my grandmother in Richmond, Virginia her city’s namesake…

Internet has been hideous on this trip, including the lodgings’ WiFi and the villages’ cell networks.  The exceptions are surprising and delighting.  In Richmond the WiFi was good enough to download Rushmore from iTunes so I could introduce Ma to her first Wes Anderson film.  For £20 I bought a SIM card from an airport vending machine that gives me all-I-can-eat data, and it worked great up until I reached the boonies of northern England.  Now when I get 3G walking through a small village, I drink my fill from the hose while I can.

On one occasion I had an amazing signal at the top of a hill while we stopped for lunch, and had the best unexpected FaceTime chat with my kids back home.  So I’ll stop complaining now, but I wouldn’t mind another opportunity like that to present itself!  Last night I held my iPad high over my head in just the right position trying to get any web page to load, managed to trade a few iMessages before my arms got tired, and then I just gave up and fell asleep.  It’s amazing how much more sleep you get with inconvenient Internet!

While on the subject of technology, let me give a shout out to Viewranger, the mapping app I’m using on my iPhone and iPad.  I was able to download the high detail Ordinance Survey maps (£20) for the Wainwright Walk, as well as routes contributed by other hikers for each day’s segment.  And they have a watch app for it, too, so at a glance I can see which direction to go and how far to the destination.  It’s been great!  I also have a backup battery in my pocket, but I’ve only needed to use it twice in 11 days.

Off to Osmotherly now.  May the broadband gods smile upon us…

A food delivery truck parked right outside our breakfast window this morning, and it took us a while to notice. That cloud looks like… Cauliflower? But the blue skies and sun draw no special attention on this trek. It’s been mostly gorgeous since St. Bees.

Yesterday, however, we had the first rain that qualified as more than the welcome, brief, refreshing drizzle we had experienced a few times previously. I still didn’t bother with my raincoat or rain cover for my backpack, but I did put the waterproof cover on my front camera holster.  Priorities!

This is all to say the weather has consistently disappointed. I was expecting rain every day, and instead it’s been boring California weather. I feel like I’m missing the true experience of Northern England. And you know what? I’m going to find a way to be okay with that.

Two more days of hiking to go…  One thing I’ll miss is the ready access to Wensleydale.  It’s in sandwiches (often with pickle, which really means a sort of chutney relish), it’s in cheese pies, it’s everywhere, as plentiful as Cheddar!  And it is delicious.  Definitely worth running an errand to the moon to resupply.

Tonight we’re in the most secluded of all our stops, the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge in the middle of the North York Moors.  It reminds me a bit of the White Mountain AMC huts back home, in so much as it’s a big lodge unexpectedly encountered above tree line after 13 miles of hiking.  The main differences are the auto road leading to this one, the beers on tap, electricity and WiFi, oh, and the bath tubs!  C2C wins on all counts.

Tomorrow is especially exciting because for our penultimate (again 13+ mile) hike we’ll meet Pebble Emeritus, Laura, in Grosmont for the final stretch!  I can’t wait.

(Photo courtesy of Senses in the Kitchen blog.)

I may have neglected to mention this.  We completed our journey!  Not yesterday, not last week, but almost four months ago.  I hope you weren’t on the edge of your seat the entire time awaiting news of our victory (or untimely demise).  But I suspect you were, and for that I apologize.

We had friends and family waiting for us at the finish line in Robin Hood’s Bay.  Laura even walked the last stretch down from Whitby.  Four months take their toll on my memory, but I vaguely recall great beer, yet another birthday cake for me (I was spoiled rotten on this trip), being presented with a picture book of the entire Wainwright Walk by my fellow hikers, and an absolutely breathtaking rainbow over the bay.  But most importantly, I remember all 12 of us enjoying each other’s company at this, our last supper, after having put countless miles on our odometers together in the preceding 16 days.

Ever since high school when my friend, Lindsay, performed in the local college’s rendition of Godspell, I’ve been in love with its songs.  Our community theatre in OBX performed the musical just a few months before this C2C trek.  So of course the hauntingly beautiful song about putting a pebble in my shoe and calling it Dare was on infinite replay in my head every day on the trail, especially during the grueling stretches.  I am one complex atheist, I assure you.

One by one, some of us with toes wet from the North Sea, we let go of our stowaway pebbles acquired from the Irish Sea at St. Bees.  After about 200 miles as my copilot, I pulled Dare out of a pocket in my camera bag — I’m no masochist — and skipped her off the surface with a big smile on my face.  “Meet your new road!”