Day 6: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

I woke up from my best night's sleep of the holiday at about 8am feeling much better than I had done the night before. We finished drying the clothes in the laundry, packed up the tent, then headed into Kirkby Stephen to buy some supplies. Dave bought himself a couple of walking poles and a proper knee support, while I found a chemist and bought some more bandages for my feet because the one I'd been using on my right foot had worked pretty well so far. I added the bandages to the Compeed on my heels, and set off pain-free at 10.30am. We soon met up with another group of people also doing the Coast to Coast, so we walked with them for a while. We also overtook and were overtaken by the 3 lads we'd first met in Shap a few times, so it was a pretty sociable morning.

At Hartley Fell, there were 3 Coast to Coast routes to choose from. We had previously decided to take the easiest route, but when we got there we discovered that the different routes were actually for different times of the year. Lo and behold, in August we were supposed to take the hardest route over a reasonably big hill. We pondered the decision while we had a snack, eventually deciding to go along the proper, hardest route. It wasn't too bad in the end, and on the way up we ate some "Refreshers Gums" which I'd bought in Kirkby Stephen. They were very nice but disappointingly didn't taste anything like Refreshers. At the top of the hill there were nine big stone monuments called the Nine Standards.

The path on the way down was very boggy, but at least it was easy on the knees and feet. We passed a couple doing the Coast to Coast with their son, and had a brief chat with them. It turned out that they'd started out carrying all their equipment, but after a few days had decided to sherpa two of their bags like us. I got the feeling that this was a fairly common theme. We stopped for lunch about 3.5 miles outside of Keld. A sheep and it's lamb kept trying to steal our food, so Dave had to keep baaing loudly at them to scare them off. I tried at one point but they just looked at me, confused. This cemented my position as probably the least scariest person ever.

After lunch the walk was pretty uneventful, apart from when I went to open a gate (the 13th gate that day, no less), only for it to come off its hinges and clatter to the floor. After looking around for any angry farmers which may have been running towards us, we put the gate back together and carried on. Dave's knee was pretty bad despite his new poles so we slowed down a bit.

Day 6 - View from Brian Cave, near Keld

 

We arrived at the tiny village of Keld at about 4pm. We were half-way. Huzzah! Dave got pretty angry when he found out that Keld didn't have a pub, and when I reassured him that the campsite had on off-license he resolutely threatened to buy up all their alcohol. In the end, he made do with a can of premium strength lager and a bottle of wine. We sat on a picnic table outside the campsite's shop for a bit and watched the world go by. Keld may not have had a pub, but it did have two churches, some hens and some sort of horse-riding team. It didn't have any phone reception though.

We set up the tent just as it began to rain. After a couple of light showers, the heavens finally opened about 15 minutes later, so I cooked our dinner in the tent's porch. It eventually stopped raining just long enough for me to do the washing up, then I got settled in the tent. As it was only about 6.30pm at this point, we spent the next 3 hours drinking, listening to music and doing crosswords, while the rain poured down outside. With no pub, no phone reception, and the generally gloomy weather it was a pretty miserable halfway point.

Needless to say, as soon as we were tired enough, we went to sleep.

At about 3am, I got out of the tent to go to the toilet, and the view of the stars was incredible, like something out of an astronomy book. Take that, light pollution. I was going to take a picture of it but then I realised that I couldn't be arsed finding my camera, and that it blatantly wouldn't look any good anyway.

Day 6 Stats:
Distance: 11.5 miles
Total Ascent: 651m
Total Descent: ???
Time taken: 5.5 hours
SMR (Stile-to-Mile Ratio): 1.39