Day 26: Leyburn to Langthwaite 17 miles

We start a bit later this morning as breakfast is served from 8am, but we eat a very hearty meal after yesterday. The extra sleep seems to have worked some magic too.

We leave the town, accompanied by house martins today, via the Leyburn Shawl. This is a well used path along the top of a modest limestone scarp or ‘shawl’. It’s good walking but we have to descend across some fields as there is a quarry above us. As we climb up to the road, a buzzard exits the woodland to our left and flies across in front of us. It’s hot and sunny in the lea of the meadow, but a squally shower comes over as we reach the road over the moor and I put on my waterproof.

We soon turn off the road and up onto the moor. We see a duck and a moorhen, the only indicators of an unseen water-filled quarry nearby. As we climb up into the purple heather, red grouse fly out of the cover. My mother always loved the pennine moorland, but I find it confusing in mist, especially if there are peat hags. We are following a good track, however, and the visibility is clear. In any case, I know we are going in the right direction as we are head north west and the strong wind today is north westerly. For the first time on this trip, I have my coat on as a windcheater to keep me warm.

The sun comes out and we drop into a dell out of the wind and stop for a break. The grass is very comfortable, ideal for an Eccles cake and a power nap. We carry on to the 446m (1463 feet) summit plateau mostly in sunshine. The views are stupendous though they don’t photograph well.

We drop down off the top and stop for lunch at an impressive memorial bench for David Stephenson Clark. He seemed to be a teacher and the motto in quotes on the bench states ‘Be brave. Dig deep. Drink a beer’. He sounds as if he was my kind of person. As soon as we start off again, we see a wheatear and then a pair of stonechats by the path (we hear the stonechats as well).

We head down the valley, taking a diversion from the marked path, as it has in part been washed away since the map was published, and arrive at the river Swale. As we approach the footbridge, Rich comments that it looks like the Humber Bridge in miniature only ‘this is small, not far away’. We see a curlew, oyster catchers, swallows, swifts and house martins as we get towards the bridge, but I still stop to look for more as we are crossing. There are burrows in the sand at the sides of the river and we are rewarded by spotting sand martins, as well as pied and grey wagtails.

We walk alongside the river, bypassing the town of Reeth where we stayed all those years ago on the Coast to Coast walk and again on the first night of our honeymoon on our way to Fort William, Skye and the Outer Hebrides. We leave the river and head over fields into the village of Healaugh. At some point, we have crossed the Coast to Coast path, but neither of us can remember where.

We leave the village via an enormously steep unclassified road that ends in a path up over the next area of moorland. We stop for a break near the top, again around 400m, and are greeted by sighting a meadow pipit. Both of us remark how much easier the miles have felt today with no clattering through undergrowth using our shins as battering rams.

One more descent into Arkengarthdale and the village of Langthwaite. The Charles Bathurst Inn, where we are staying is a little way up and out of the settlement and is very welcome when we arrive. We have climbed 3245 feet (989 metres) today, higher than Scafell Pike.

Total distance so far: 297 miles