Day 9: Reeth to Richmond, 9 miles (Gordon’s Version)

Photos

This day was somewhat unremarkable, based on days past, but was quite stunning compared to what lay ahead. We left the Hilary House and headed toward Marrick Priory, which we walked right past as a school group was being shown how to appropriately apply bud repellent to sheep (hopefully without making them go all do-lally in the head). We then headed up a splendid little trail through a small bit of forest, and through a couple of small towns. We caught up with Steve, Stella, Bruno, and Peter again and after leaving them in the small town of Marske, we went ahead through fields, over stiles, up a little hill and then past a couple of farms where we past more cows (but less scary than others) and more tourist walkers (much scarier than our bovine friends). With the help of a local farmer in Applegarth, we and another walker found the right trail and headed through a wooded, forest road before emerging on the other side with views of our destination, Richmond in sight. After taking a couple of obligatory your-hometown’s-name-in-another-country pictures, we wandered into the metropolis of the trip. Richmond is the biggest town on the journey and it really feels like it. Although it has a population in the thousands (rather than the tens or hundreds) the cars whizzing past you really hurts your ears and your senses when you’ve been used to lonely country trails for nine days. We saw something else here that had left us for a large part of the trip—pop culture. For most of our trip through tiny hamlets and villages, we ran into many local people who had no need or desire for stylish clothes, cars or other trappings. But in Ricmond, we were surrounded by folks with a sense of “style” otherwise missing on the trip. And with that sense of style came a feeling that this town isn’t all that different from any other town. It seemed to have lost its uniqueness in being mainstream. So while some people stayed around for two days in Richmond, as it had all the comfortable amenities of modern living and was a good place for a rest day, Lisa and I were quite happy that we had already booked a room down the road in Danby Wiske. Our experience of Ricmond wasn’t all mediocre though, as we stayed at the lovely Willance House, a name is derived from a man a few hundred years ago who fell off a cliff, but survived, his horse being the only casualty. This miraculous man had lived in this same house where we sipped tea after our hike. The owner of the place was a lovely little lady, whose name escapes me, and she and her husband had just taken over ownership a couple months back. What wonderful hosts they were and what a lovely house to stay in! Especially as our Californian friends were there as well. Our stay was also enhanced by a dinner at a thai restaurant (I guess bigger cities aren’t all that bad), as pub food had become quite stale by this point. Regardless of how many ways you cook a sausage, it’s still a sausage and I surely had had my fill. We went to bed content and with a bellies fully of Thai cuisine.