Hike Notes
Couldn't have asked for a better day to start our second leg through the Yorkshire Dales. The terrain was still fairly level, but much more pleasant than the day before. Pretty early on we came across a much more photogenic stone circle and some old stone structures to house sheep and other animals in the rain. Our new guide for the last two legs (Rockin' Roy) said the animals would stay on the bottom floor and families would stay on the second floor where all the heat had risen. Pretty neat. I guess there will be a lot of these in the Dales.
Also pictured: silly thumb
Had a little bit of a climb and got to see some of the beauty of the Dales. They aren't as extreme as the peaks and valleys of the Lake District, but are amazing in their own right. I really enjoyed the openness of the rolling hillsides.
Before I left Keswick I made sure to buy a new pair of boots (Since Tim and Sue were headed back to Devon and I couldn't take advantage of their generosity any longer). Today was their first real test. And they worked pretty well! It took a while to get the lacing right (they are a little narrow in the toes, so I have to keep them loose down there) but once I did, I was zooming. Was well ahead of the pack most of the way. It felt good to be able to go as fast as I wanted.
Foot Status: 9 Meep Meeps out of 10
Rockin' Roy
Our new guide, Rockin' Roy (because he always says 'Rockin!' as a celebrative cry) is pretty great. He was born and raised in Manchester and has a real thick accent. It's taken me a while just to be able to understand the words he's saying, which doesn't actually help because he uses a lot of slang I've never heard of before. He's a seasoned hiker who has been all over the world guiding trips like this. He's done the coast to coast 10 times now and knows everything. He calls cows "Daisy" and when asked about the design of stone walls he told us all about the Yorkshire design and how it made it so you didn't have to make them so wide at the bottom, "unlike me" he added and slapped his behind. Someone in our group asked if she could take his picture from a specific angle "to make him brighter" to which he responded "me teachers been tryna make me brighter fur years". These next 10 days will be fun.
Rockin!
"Settle down, Daisy"
Hikers Exposed: Not A Great Day For Sam
Sam went off on her own for a while again today. When she got back she looked kind of sullen and pulled me aside to let the others pass. After we were some distance away, she asked for some gauze from my medkit and that's when I noticed that her right arm was wrapped in some torn fabric.
She told me she had a bad fall and got a good scrape across a tree branch.
I gave her the gauze and she turned away from me to apply it. I tried not to stare but got a quick glimpse of her arm as she took off her makeshift bandage. It was a fairly bad scrape. It actually looked more like a bunch of small punctures to me, almost like the branch had bitten her.
After she finished she turned back to me and gave a somewhat forced smile, "There, Good as new". She asked me to promise not to say anything to anyone else. I reluctantly agreed (I know how uncomfortable it can be to have a bunch of hikers worried about you even when you're not worried about yourself), but I also made her promise to say something if it got infected or something. "Of course I will!", she reassured me and walked off to catch up to the group.