Henrikdoc

… The Bells, The Bells ..

Again

But not all night thankfully – led me to ask the Qu. Why some and not others ?

Chat GPT this morning in response to a question about church bells! The ones here in Richmond close to our BnB didn’t chime all night and stopped at midnight to restart at 7 am.

Fascinating bit of info for us townies who maybe just don’t know. (copy and paste and go link below )

https://chatgpt.com/share/6aa8e383-f5c8-83eb-a264-8a413a1a1144

Breakfast was filled with the voices of 4 Yorkshire men debating whether to get an Uber taxi to Keld – our hostess didn’t know if Uber operated in Richmond … led to a debate about scammers and taxi bookings…

Never dull here.

At least we knew we were walking: Wainwright wrote “if you are fond of placid rural scenery and have an interest in farming you might enjoy this section of the walk; but if your preference is for high ground and rough hills you will find it tedious”(ref p110 awainwright a coast to coast walk Pub Frances Collins 2013)

It is a flat walk across the Vale of Mowbray, an extension of the Vale of York, the contours of which “nowhere rise even to a paltry 100 ft”(ref awainwright – as above)

So we started … by buying our lunch

and then skirting around the perimeter of Richmond and its castle (English Heritage)

… past the Sewage works – delightful

and onward towards Colburn

A fair bit of woodland at the beginning as we followed the River Swale – ideal for some pics of tree trunks / shapes/ patterns

Catterick Army barracks are very close by

There were a few cow fields to negotiate today but all cows were friendly … and some even quite cute … took a wide turn around these mums and calves

The book (coast to coast path – stedman and butler ed 2020 p 206 talks about the Hildyard Arms in Colburn but this looked decidedly closed to us

… and we still haven’t seen any hedgehogs !

The first of a large number of fields today – all of which needed walking through or across or round

And a dog walker with a bit of an entourage

The A1 also made an appearance ahead but we resisted going to the service station for a KFC (bit too far off course anyway 🤣)

…before a little bit of Roman history in Catterick – or at least an info point

We ploughed on to Bolton on Swale where the most important feature was St Mary’s church and the monument to Henry Jenkins, a man who lived to 169 “believe it or not” (ref p114 A.Wainwright – as above)

Someone clearly has researched it a bit more since Wainwright first wrote his book in 1973 – feel free to expand the next photos for a bit of a read …. Or feel totally free to skip them completely 🤭

It’s a pretty church none the less

With the memorial in the grounds

Lunch was duly had sitting against a wall and enjoying our fresh cheese and tomato chutney sandwich from the bakers (no photo but didn’t want you to think we were not eating properly 🤣🤣🤣)

This was approximately half way . The second half of the walk to Danby Wiske has a modification of the original Wainwright walk introduced in recent years – a slight detour at Ellerton Hill so that the “longest section of continuous road walking on the journey – eight miles of it to Oaktree Hill”(ref A Wainwright p 115- as above) is made more interesting — but only if you like fields and farms etc .

Given that we like it all – hills, mountains, fields, undulating Dales etc I will leave the photos to speak for themselves.

With the Moors getting closer

Before very quickly reaching our destination for the night- we did arrive at 3:40 pm so had tea and biscuits

Pre booked dinner at the White Swan in Danny Wiske.

Asked for STP for pudding – came back as the last two just gone 😢. Had the Apple crumble instead …. Forgot to bring it… apologised profusely… got it late … for free… but it wasn’t apple but blackberry … APART FROM THAT it was very good….

Nice custard, nice crumble, good amount of fruit – all be it blackberry… scores 8/10

Shorter day tomorrow – have to play chicken across the A19 though 😱🤦‍♂️

Zzzz.