The peace was immediate, as we began to stir on the dawn of day three. The fantastical comfort of the yurt surrounded us, as the calm of the dales outside was only disturbed by the occasional sheep or nuthatch, the tumbling of the nearby river Swale the only constant. Once I had gained enough consciousness to move, my thoughts turned first to our boots. I slowly swung myself out of bed and crouched down to inspect them. They were still a little damp from the previous day and so, not wanting to start off with wet boots, I returned them to their spot in front of the heater where they had spent an hour or so the previous evening.
We ventured out into the morning one at a time, both encountering a particular sheep near the toilets. The night beforehand, we had met the same sheep hanging out the other side of the fence next to the loos. He had been very keen to come over and say hello when we had approached. His reappearances did nothing but seal his title of “Pervert Sheep”, although to his credit, he may have just been unusually friendly.
At about eight o’clock, a polite tap at the yurt door announced the arrival of our breakfasts. Julia had prepared me a delicious egg and bacon roll, and Beth had croissants with the sweetest raspberry jam. At the same time, they presented us with our lunches for the day, which they had also kindly prepared. This included each a large cheese and pickle baguette, a cereal bar, a KitKat, a packet of crisps, an apple and a juice box – it was an incredibly well put together lunch.
Sadly, once this perfect start was complete, it was time to turn our attention to departing. We pulled on our boots and found them mercifully dry; or at least mostly dry and pleasantly warm. We closed the door of our yurt with a sad click, and went to say our farewells. Julia and Jim are absolute treasures, and their yurts are a wonderful stay – I cannot recommend them enough; we will certainly be finding excuses to return ourselves! Before departing, I had one last secret of the place to show Beth. Tucked away behind the house, past the hot tub, is a stunning waterfall. There is a little bench where you can look down over it, or you can go right to the shores of its falls and touch the water. If you were here for multiple nights, then this would definitely be a lovely place to spend an idyllic evening. Yet sadly we weren’t, and the Herriot Way was calling us on. We climbed back up, waved goodbye to the pervert sheep (who was again acting peculiarly), and just before we left a little before half past nine, saw the sherpa van arrive and whisk our bag away. It was gone, and now it was time that we were too.
We crossed over the Swale for the first time that day straight away. Climbing a little up the side of the dale, we looked back to see the yurts below us. This made Beth sad. A well-timed sheep then came tumbling down the slope beside us, and crossed our path with the little dignity it could recoup. Beth laughed, and so we continued on our way.
On day three of The Herriot Way, walkers have a choice: the high road or the low road. Previously, I had always taken the low road, but on this occasion I had been curious about the high. However, our experience over Great Shunner Fell has led us both to wonder whether this would be a good idea. We couldn’t imagine that the high paths of day three would necessarily be any easier than those of day two, and so concluded that it would be the smart decision to take the low road once again. The background chatter of our fellow walkers at the Keld Inn had confirmed our decision; all were in agreement: take the low.
And so it was that we found ourselves walking alongside the Swale below us, and began the longest day of the walk, aka the slog. This may seem like an unfair name for such a beautiful part of the world, but there is reason for it, which we will get to. For now however, things were beautiful. The day was sunny, and our path presented us with fantastic views of the dale and the meandering swale, toward which we slowly descended. We hopped over a tumbling stream and made our way amongst a widespread flock of very chilled-out sheep, and eventually reached the valley floor next to the river. Our path led us through the narrow dale, over sunny pastures and warm walls, never straying far from the water. This first half of the day is pretty perfect, and easy-going too. The simple riverside route leads calmly downstream, and we stopped for some elevenses beneath some trees along its bank. We settled ourselves down amongst the rooted bank in the dappled sunshine, and enjoyed what remained of our Nutella flapjacks, and a quiet little pause.
Further along, we passed a couple of guys fly fishing, and soon after arrived at what is possibly Yorkshire’s most beautiful old stone bridge. We were now on the approach to Gunnerside, the village that was sitting just shy of the day’s halfway point. As we made our way through its surrounding farmland and ducked back to the river’s edge, we encountered a lady walking her border collie. As we drew nearer, we saw the owner pick up the remains of what looked like a Christmas tree and throw it for the dog to retrieve. I considered this impressive, and commented such as we passed. It turns out that this was something of a special day for the collie. Apparently, he had been attempting to drag this tree through a fence a little down the river for some weeks, to no success. Every time he had tried, he had just not been able to get the angle right, and had to leave it behind. Yet today, by pure chance, he had somehow found the perfect angle to drag the tree under and through, and present it proudly to his owner; his day of triumph had finally arrived. As his owner told the story, he presented me his tree proudly and sat expectantly, nudging my hand and staring up through keen, shiny eyes. We left him and his owner to their walk, on what must have been one of his bestest ever days.
We passed next to the haunted bridge that led to Gunnerside (which by contrast is said to be the home to a celestial headless dog) and headed up the road into the pretty little village. There is a nice pub here, but it was too early into the walk to stop for a drink (a mistake the stag party had made last time, to our detriment), and so we headed out the other side via the public loos. And it is at about this point that day three, infamously, takes a turn. After crossing a couple more sheep fields, the path enters a wooded section, and from here things begin to get a little overgrown, a little less well-kept, and you begin to feel every mile; and this is the slog. We still had over seven miles to go, and every time we checked the map, we seemed to be making little progress. We continued onward, as this is all there was to do, on the lookout for our lunch spot. I was keeping an eye for a very particular location; a lovely riverbank meander which I had stopped at with the boys previously. However, I could not remember exactly where it was, so it was a bit of a gamble as to exactly when we would get lunch. Indeed, more of the route passed than I had expected, and still we had not stumbled upon it. We did come across another distinct feature of the day though. There is a moment where the footpath leads you up onto what feels like the top of a wide wall. I have not encountered anything like this anywhere else, and it is actually quite cool. You are a few feet above the ground below, and a couple of the big top slabs are slightly wobbly, and overall, it’s quite a fun and memorable little stretch (points to the slog).
It is also, it turns out, at the end of this that the aforementioned lunch spot was waiting. Spotting the rocky shore through the trees, I picked up the place, relieved to have found it and excited for some food. We settled down on the bank beside the stony deposit on the inside of the meander, and tucked into to the wonderful lunch that Julia and Jim had prepared for us earlier that morning. The cheese and pickle roll was delicious, and the lunch was definitely bigger than the ones that we had become used to. Once we had finished, each with a breakfast bar still to spare, we stood up. Yet we did not put our bags back on; not yet, oh no. Instead, we had a game to play; a game invented by the boys and I three years previously. A fantastic game, and a game which had almost ended with Rowan taking a rock full pelt – to the face. We made our way over the stones, near to the shore. I had the cores of our apples in hand. I threw the first one a little upstream along the gentle meander. The water was flowing a little faster than last time, and the core began to bobble along the surface quite quickly. And so the assault began. Beth and I launched stones at the apple as it flowed downstream, the river exploding relentlessly about it, until it was downstream and out of range. We then did the same with the second apple core, and again pelted it with rocks. I am not sure that we actually hit them once; however, it was lots of fun.
So, back to the slog. With still probably three to four miles to go, it wasn’t long before we began to feel the length of the walk again (to be fair, it is our longest to date). To help pass the time, Beth suggested another game. This one involved us each taking it in turn to say a word and ultimately create a story. Actually, this was surprisingly enjoyable. We ended up getting quite into it, and together wrote a pretty good tale. Unfortunately, some of the details ended up being a little inappropriate for the blog; however, a loose synopsis would be as follows…
McSqueaky the mouse departs on a quest to help mousekind find their “words”. Along the way, he gains a companion, the mongoose, and together they venture through the woods to the owl sanctuary. After evading their attack, they arrive at the library, where a dirty sock grows mushrooms in the corner. They trip balls, find their words, and realise they are also gay. Following a daring escape from the owls, McSqueaky returns to the mice, along with the mongoose, to give them their words. Unfortunately, the mice were not accepting of his new lifestyle, and so were not interested. And this is why mice cannot speak to this day.
It was a triumphant moment when we successfully concluded our story, and congratulated ourselves on a job well done, at first finding it difficult to talk normally again. We had also managed to effortlessly burn a couple of miles – we were concentrating so hard on the story that neither of us could provide many details of what we had passed along the way – meaning that the game had very much done the trick.
And so finally we found ourselves on the approach to Reeth. This at the very least marked the beginning of the end of the day, and we were both keen to see its roofs appearing on the horizon to say the least. It was just over the hill now, and yet still seemed determined not to present itself to the weary travellers. What did appear in the distance instead however was the suspension bridge that would lead us across the Swale to the correct side of the river, and I gave a sigh of relief. As we headed down a slope toward the bank once more, I caught a flash of blue darting along the opposite edge of the river – a kingfisher! This is only the second one that I had ever seen, and the first since we had spotted one down in Winchelsea a few years back. We waited, but sadly it did not reappear for Beth to see too.
We finally reached the bridge which would lead us up into Reeth. I was keen to cross; however, as soon as Beth stepped on and felt its bounciness beneath her boots, she was less so. Noises of protest followed me over, and when they caught up and requested that I run, I did so. Turns out, the resulting increased bouncing of the bridge was not the intended outcome; she didn’t like that either. Nonetheless, we made it across unscathed. And so, we traipsed up into Reeth.
We didn’t stay long here, just long enough to pick up some lunches for tomorrow and feel a spatter of rain on our faces. We plodded over the green and began our way toward Grinton, another little village very nearby. Of course, our day would not be complete without an appropriately timed pub stop. After crossing back over the Swale again, we entered The Bridge Inn. This lovely little pub was a great place to stop at the end of such a long day. We sat inside, sheltered from the circling rain and stiff breeze. After our first drinks, we moved to a bright window seat and enjoyed a couple more – we really made the most of neither of us needing to drive across the walk. By the time we left, we were both surprisingly merry for a pair so exhausted.
Sadly, we were not yet done. Our accommodation for the night, the Grinton Youth Hostel, was only a short distance away. Unfortunately, it was all a fairly steep climb uphill. So, as the sun began to set across Swaledale, we made the final push upward. We finally arrived at about half past five, and were pleased to have done so. Whilst ordering one of my drinks (I forget which), the landlord had informed me that this particular Youth Hostel would be closing down soon; in fact, the following week would be its last. This was sad to hear, but I am at least glad that we got the opportunity to stay there before it did so. So, I grabbed a bottle of Wainwright beer from reception, dumped our bags in the room, and returned to the kitchen to heat up Beth’s dinner. However, we were not alone. I ended up having an alarming conversation with a visibly drunk man cooking a steak, who was clearly going through something. I have never known soup take so long to cook in a microwave, and we could not get out of there quickly enough! This aside, we then went for the rest of our dinner in the restaurant and were able to relax a little at the end of what had been a very long day. Oh, and you will be delighted to know that we would once again be sleeping in single beds (because bunk beds were cheaper).
