Richmond to Ingleby Cross

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Let’s get back in the game…

What a lovely time in Richmond! Two whole days off in an amazing farm house (Galloways House at Tunstall Road Farm). So what to do with ourselves? We had no idea until Mandy and Skyla pointed it out to us, that what we really needed to do was head back into Richmond and walk with them around every single ladies clothing shop - how could we have missed that? Just over 15,000 steps on our first day off!!

The highlight of the day though was Ellis going for a swim in the Swale. Pretty sure it was to rejuvenate his muscles, just like elite athletes who have an ice bath. He enjoyed himself, even though he was the only person mad enough to go in to the cold water.

Lovely informative farm tour and delicious lunch on Sunday with our hosts - great recommendation for a fantastic Sunday roast.

Sent the ladies back to London on the train and chilled out for the rest of Sunday night.

Monday morning came soon enough and up early to see / help the pig and sheep being loaded in the trailer for their last ever joyride before satisfying somebody else’s Sunday roast craving.

Then back to the real work - centre of Richmond it was and we restarted our walk with the furthest day of the whole tour to look forward to. The guidebook said it was 22.5 miles - they lied it was just over 23.5 miles and boy did we feel the last mile!

Thankfully the walk was very flat - no big climbs (or little ones for that matter). But it was long; very long. We had made three mistakes for today; the first was opting for shorts - when a lot of the paths were very narrow and had plenty of stinging nettles, thistles and other prickly plants to give our bare legs a hard time. The second problem was not getting our feet ready for the distance and we now both have painful blisters that we need to treat before tomorrow. The third was not researching lunch well enough - a stop at 15 miles in Danby Wiske for a nice ploughman’s or sandwich and some refreshing drink before covering the rest of the walk was planned, only to find out it has been shut down, so we had to finish the walk on empty.

Ellis set himself a new goal in life after we stopped at St Mary’s church in Bolton-on-Swale. We came across a celebration of Henry Jenkins who apparently died at the age of 169 - now Ellis wants to beat this and become the oldest Jenkins in history.

Today was also the only day we do not spend any time in a National Park - back into the North York Moors national park for the rest of the trip tomorrow.

Three more days to go and tomorrow should certainly be the toughest with 21.5 miles and plenty of hills. Oh for a new pair of feet tonight (can we leave ours under the pillow for the foot fairy?)….!!

Just had dinner and now off to bed in our cottage room at the Blue Bell Inn, Ingleby Cross.

Night, night.

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