Day 9: Richmond to Ingleby Cross

With a 19-mile day ahead of us, we got up early for the Full English breakfast we'd ordered the night before. As we'd come to expect from Jane, we were provided with a veritable feast: fruit salad to start, cereals, cooked breakfast. The works. Here's a picture of us slumming it like the best of them:

The camping, breakfast and packed lunch we'd asked for came to a grand total of £11 each, but amazingly Jane told us to call it 10. We all gave her £12 as a thank you for running the Best Campsite Ever™. Adam wasn't feeling very well so made the decision to miss out on the day's walking and get a lift to the next campsite with Dave II instead. Dave muttered something about "convenient". Adam very kindly offered to pack up our tents for us though, and we ended up setting off at 9am. About 4 minutes later, we realised we'd forgotten the second map we needed for the day, so Naomi ran back to get it. Having stupidly forgotten to put Compeed on my heels the night before, my feet were pretty sore, so after a while I borrowed one of Dave's walking poles which helped a little.

It rained a bit just before we reached our halfway point, Danby Wiske, so we shoved our waterproofs on. We arrived in Danby Wiske in very good time, so we sat down on the picnic table outside the pub and ate our packed lunches. It rained again while we were eating, but the table had a big umbrella so we managed to keep our sandwiches nice and dry. Soon after we set off, we saw some warning signs for a troll that lived under Wiske Bridge, who apparently eats children with custard. By complete chance, we managed to catch him starting his lunch.

During the afternoon, we also walked past a farm of free-range hens and crossed our second railway line of the day:

As we got near to Ingleby Cross, the toll of 15+ miles was beginning to get to us, so we started to flag. This wasn't exactly helped by a mad dash over the dual-carriageway A1, and we crawled slowly into the campsite at The Blue Bell Inn at about 4pm. Adam had set our tents up for us which was lucky because as soon as we arrived it began to rain again. When it stopped about quarter of an hour later, Adam and Naomi went to collect Naomi's car from Reeth. I passed the time by reading the quality journalism in the 'Nuts' and 'Zoo' magazines which Adam had bought that afternoon. They're practically identical. Seriously. The other two still weren't back so I had a sleep.

Adam and Naomi got back about 6.45pm, so we went for dinner when the pub opened at 7pm. 3 courses and 1 1/2 pints later I was feeling pretty drowsy, so after Adam had set off back to Nottingham I retired to bed.

Day 9 Stats:
Distance: 19 miles
Total Ascent: 265m
Total Descent: 310m
Time taken: 7 hours
SMR (Stile-to-Mile Ratio): 1.95