Coast to Coast UK - Keld to Reeth

It was a perfect day for walking. We woke to bright sunshine streaming into our room and the day looked set to reach the promised 18 degrees.

It would have been a great day for the high route out of Keld, there being no chance of poor visibility and no fear of losing our bearings on the barren, wild moorland, described as the most desolate on the Coast to Coast, with its relics of the lead mining industry.

The lure for us today, however, was a gentler walk along Swaledale, meandering through the valley in step with the River Swale.

The reading time for today’s 12-mile (20km) test, blew out to a whole 30 minutes before we had even left the picturesque village of Keld, as the Countryside and Heritage Centre and the Keld Museum, both beckoned us as we passed through the town this morning.

Because of this, we were not on the track until about 9:20am but it was well worth the delay. I love these little villages that are proud of their heritage and want to share it with interested passers-by.

The Countryside and Heritage display centred on the story of the cow house, or in local dialect, the cow’us – the large stone building that can be seen in every field, used to house the cows over winter, and the way the resulting mook had to be shovelled out daily and stockpiled ready to be spread on the fields in the springtime. No wonder the fields are so lush and green. This practice still exists today, although most now use bigger, more modern barns

Anyway this, and other things, like the history of the first school in the area, held our attention for a while before we got our walk underway. We had planned to walk the low route as provided to us in gpx file format by our provider company, but we were also going to mix and match it with some of the alternative sections of the route suggested by Alby Williams. Alby is someone who has completed the Coast to Coast a countless number of times and is a wealth of information about everything C2C. He posts regular updates and information on the Coast to Coast Facebook groups, including detailed route maps with variations.

We began, taking Alby’s route on the south side of the river, and eventually, after meandering through a wood, across sheep fields, and alongside the riverbank, we rejoined the official Coast to Coast track on the north side. Before crossing Ramps Holme Bridge to join the route to the north, we stopped for first lunch on the riverside rocks.

Crossing the extremely narrow foot bridge, we stayed close to the river for most of the way, passing through glorious buttercup carpeted fields. We walked into the village of Gunnerside at what we thought was an appropriate time for lunch, stopping at the café for a proper coffee to enjoy with lunch (we had a proper local icecream too), and because eating anything other than food purchased in the café, even at the outdoor tables, was prohibited, we moved on to find somewhere else to eat our sandwiches.

Next, we crossed the roadbridge out of Gunnerside, to complete the afternoon’s walk back on the south side of the river, according to Alby’s alternate route. We walked a sometimes, wet, mostly dry, occasionally rocky, track for 2 miles, before rejoining a minor country road, and found absolutely nowhere to stop and eat, as the track was lined with hawthorn, blackberries, briar roses, thistles and stinging nettles. If everything in Australia is out to kill you, believe me, everything in the UK is out to scratch you, sting you, and tear you apart.

We walked quite a way up another track, which was part of the Swale Trail cycle route, before we found a convenient wall, opposite a property, that looked like it was inviting us to sit on it and eat. It was one of those houses where, if you stepped out the front door, you would step directly onto the road. We felt a bit like we were sitting in their front garden, even though the wall was on the other side of the lane. Here we rested and ate briefly, all the while expecting the householder to come out and tell us to move on, before continuing on the cycle route towards Reeth.

An unpleasant encounter with some dirt bikers who were speeding up the narrow lane behind us, left a bitter taste in our mouths for a while. The sign at the beginning of the track said it was ‘not suitable for motors’ and was a shared cycle and walking path. So when Wallsy tried to wave him to slow down, the guy stopped up ahead of us and told us we shouldn’t be walking on the road. I managed to get Wallsy not to enter the debate, and thankfully, when he got no response, he turned and rode off. I didn’t fancy a heated encounter with a stranger on a lonely Yorkshire Lane.

Motorbikes forgotten, we walked on and entered a field that would take us back down to the river and closer to Reeth. Here Wallsy demonstrated how to cross the river on the large stepping stones that were in place, and we walked our weary legs the rest of the way, across the Swing Bridge (which was really a suspension bridge, Wallsy tells me), and down narrow laneways into town.

Reeth is the first village we have stayed in that is centred on a village green. Our pub, the Black Bull (pubs called the Black Bull in the UK, are as common as pubs called The Railway, at home), faces onto the village green. They had already reserved us a table for dinner, which we were thankful for, and they are very onto any food allergies and intolerances everywhere we have been, even if it is only to tell you which things on the menu you can’t have. I can’t remember how many flights of stairs we clambered up to reach our room, dragging our suitcases behind us, daypacks on our backs, but it was a long way at the end of another 8-hour, 14-mile day, that’s for sure.

It is a very endearingly ramshackle, rickety, windy, narrow staircase kind of pub, in keeping with the fact it dates back to 1680 and is Reeth’s oldest surviving inn. You have to step down into the ensuite from the bedroom, and if you make the mistake of closing the door behind you, it refuses to open from the inside, but the staff are friendly, the service is great, there is a bed and shower and that’s all we need.