Lincolns Inn Bridge to Burneside

on Aug 14 in Uncategorized by

I woke up on the morning of Day Five in a fair amount of pain. My leg was hurting, my feet were hurting, my shoulders were hurting. Who’s bloody idea was this walk thing anyway?

“Ow” I said as I stumbled around like some sort of crippled zombie. “Ow ow ow ow”. It took me about ten minutes to walk the 50 meters to the toilet block and back. Oh yes, today was not going to be a good day.

I had originally had some vague ideas of getting up at dawn and setting off early in order not to slow the others down. But the prospect of hobbling fourteen miles all by myself lost it’s appeal at around five in the morning. My Captain Oats style heroics were forfeited in favor of having some stretcher bearers easily to hand.

Still, the disparity between the faster and the slower walkers was pretty great, and so it was decided that we would go for a staggered start. We split ourselves into three groups: fast, slow, and walking wounded (no prizes as to where I ended up).

Due to the campsite being a mile or so away the Dales Way we had wandered off the path somewhat, so Kerry kindly gave us a lift to Lincoln’s Inn Bridge to rejoin it. While we were all committed to walking all the way to Bowness, we saw little need to add superfluous miles to our journey. We’d signed up to do the Dales Way damnit, and I begrudged every torturous footstep above and beyond that.

So Mushy, Brooky, and myself set off half an hour before the rest and attempted to build up enough of a lead in order that we wouldn’t be overtaken 200 meters down the path. To my surprise I found that after walking on my bad leg for a little while it began to improve rather than deteriorate. Sure it hurt, but it wasn’t really slowing me down. Mushy was coping well with his injured tendon and Brooky had only really joined us out of charity anyway, so what I had thought was going to be an excruciating endurance test ended up being a relatively pleasant morning’s walk (relatively)

There were a few problems. Up until then the footpath had been exceptionally well signposted, but all of a sudden the waymarkers dried up and we frequently found ourselves standing in the middle of fields trying to work out which way next. There was also quite a bit of mud to contend with, and on a couple of occasions we had to make a detour in order to avoid a herd of cows who appeared to be doing the Dales Way too.

At one point we crossed over the M6 motorway on a footbridge. It was rather startling to be walking through beautiful serene countryside and then to turn a corner and find 80mph traffic hurtling beneath your feet.

We made good time, and we had probably done around six or seven miles when the others eventually caught us up. We walked on together for another four miles or so, enjoying the sunshine and each others company.

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The group successfully circumnavigate a cow in a stream. Go team!! (photo by Oli Walker)

We then split up again. We were due to stay the night in Kendal, which was not actually on the Dales Way but was pretty close to it. Dave, Lee, Craig and Mushy decided that they would leave the path and head directly for the town, whereas Oli, Rich, Brooky and myself chose to stick to the footpath and get Kerry to pick us up from Burneside. There was very little in it milage wise, but I reasoned that the Dales Way would be better signposted and maintained than some random public footpath. I really didn’t relish the prospect of getting lost or hacking my way through a nettle forrest.

As usual those last four miles seemed to be just as far as the previous ten. At one point we came across a eight year old girl selling cans of ice cold pop beside the path . She charged 70p a can, most reasonable given the remote location; although everyone did just giving her a quid (apart from Oli that is who fastidiously counted out the exact change, the tight bastard). We all thought her very enterprising until her Granddad told us that she was just operating a franchise licensed by her older brother. She was paying him 50% of all her profits while he went swanning off to a birthday party. That boy will probably own half the country by the time he’s fifteen.

We reached Burneside by about 4pm and waited for Kerry to pick us up in a nearby pub. It was called the Jolly Angler, but was swiftly renamed The Oli’s Janglers in honor of Oli’s recently acquired habit of stopping walking every three hundred meters in order to grease his knackers to prevent chaffing (I bet you’re glad I told you that aren’t you).

I wouldn’t recommend a visit to Oli’s Janglers. It was one of those pubs that if it had a jukebox it would have scratched to a halt the moment we walked in the door. In the short space of time it took to down a pint we overheard a conversation about dogfighting and one that began “I’m not racist but….”. Not a nice place and we were glad to get out of it.

Fortunately Kerry picked us up pretty quickly and we went off to the more civilized town of Kendal, which appeared very nice indeed. Unfortunately we arrived too late to buy any mint cake but we did go out for a pint and a very nice chinese meal. Gav also rejoined us that eening, he had been due to do so that morning but his car had been broken into and he had to get his window’s replaced (so he tells us anyway).

After the chinese it was back to the youth hostel, our 11 bedded shared room, and a race to go to sleep before everyone else started snoring.

The worst was now behind us, just ten more miles and then we’d be done. Marvelous stuff.

Vital Statistics

Time set off: 9:00am
Time arrived: 4:00pm
Rough distance traveled: 14/15 miles
Number of times cows stopped play: 2

I didn’t take my camera with me on Day 5 so photos are a little scarce.You can still see the video for the fifth day over at the ITV local site. Neil has also kindly uploaded some of the day three footage to youtube:

Related posts:

  1. Burneside to Bowness-on-Windermere
  2. The magnificent thirteen
  3. Ilkley to Grassington
  4. Whernside Manor to Holme Farm
  5. Day Two

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