A prompt start as we had to have our cases ready for collection at 8am… which we managed. A good breakfast with the Swiss ladies, and then a farewell to our splendid hosts Barbie and Ken. Into the taxi and off to Keld where we finished yesterday. Our taxi arrived at the same time as the Swiss ladies, Sibylle and Cornelia. We set off walking with them for the first hour. They were good company, but were on a longer walk today than Tricia and me, so we let them press on, whilst we took a bit of time. Particularly as we were mainly climbing, and I was finding it hard work :-).

We stopped at Blakethwaite Smelt, something of a ruin, but a beautiful spot with water running down the hill. We then set off again…. climbing. We got a little confused with the direction of the C2C, but sorted it out. We were then up amongst old lead mines… quite barren and somewhat grim. We followed Hard level gill, passing old smelting mills long out of operation. We went past the Sydney trio, Natalie, Jim and Tom, they were having lunch… we got to talking about grouse, Tricia and me said we had not seen any. Of course this meant that we continued our walk we started to see loads!

We lunched at ‘Surrender Bridge’, then continued the walk down towards Reeth. Somehow we missed a turning on the C2C, and ended up in a village called Healaugh. We adjusted by joining the ‘low level’ C2C route and walked into Reeth alongside the River Swale. We found the Hotel Buck, both hot and ready for a cold drink. The walk was only 11-12 miles, but I found it hard going today… yesterday I felt great… not sure why I was so fatigued today.

We had a good meal in the bar, sat on the table next to the Sydney trio, and chatted with them. A walk around Reeth in the cooler evening after was nice.