Pennine Way 14. With stile and with style.

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Yesterday is ancient history. Gone are the mist riddled moors of Cross Fell, the rain soaked dales of Knock Pike and the unsighted peaks of Great Dun Fell and Little Dun Fell (6 m height difference and what a difference name wise!) and instead gentle gradients overs well maintained pathways.

Sure the gentle gradients go through a heap of fields and yes they were a bit wet taking a toll on Julie’s boots but the biggest obstacle is the fact that just about each fence needs to be crossed using a stile. As such heaps of stiles were the order of the day. They come in all shapes, sizes, configurations and each presents it’s own unique problem. Some are so skinny you pack gets stuck which is a bit embarrassing, some so skinny at the base they are only wide enough for one foot at a time which necessitates some weird and wonderful dance steps atop the style, others have steps up and down that dictate which feet (right or left) go where and it seems every now and then I start on the wrong one. But I like them.

We then walked into Alston. The section from Alston to Slaggydale we had heard from other walkers was particularly boggy so we decided to do the walk on an alternate route (that’s not cheating, that common sense). It just happened that the alternate route was along the South Tyne Railway Trail and that just happens to be flat, well sealed, well drained, well maintained and well - easy. We did detour back on the Pennine Way for a couple of km to visit a Roman ruin but it was pretty unimpressive and really that was the time we managed to get wet from above (rain) and below (super wet grass and mud). Slaggydale is much nicer than it sounds. The railway do a good tourist train thing and the atmosphere there was great. We start there again tomorrow and do not want to see anything like the last photo.

As today’s walk was relatively short there’s enough energy to walk the 2 km there and 2 km back into Alston for evening drinks and meals tonight. The pub has a good reputation for ‘honest’ food so we will see what that means.

Trust all goes well.

Ciao for now.

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