Accommodation: YHA Keld
We slept at 9PM last night and got up at 8AM this morning! As Devin says, "It was a righteous sleep." We had a slow, leisurely morning for once - didn't have breakfast at the YHA since we thought we'd look around a bit. So we broke bread at the Pink Geranium, a nice enough tea shop. I was so hungry by then I decided to go for the Full English (but veg, this time) although I had sworn off the whole F.E. thing the day before - especially with all the salt pork and sausage!
Then we went to the library to check our email. Our cat sitter friend emailed us that our cats were fine: "under covers and under bed." He also added that he "didn't have too much respect for people who only walked partway across England." Checking other email, we learned the strangest and most shocking news: a friend's husband had been fatally stabbed in a robbery. Words fail me. It was a sad and bizarre thing, so discordant with our peaceful and beautiful surroundings. . . . What can one really say? I thought maybe I could offer some sort of commiseration since our family had also suffered from an act of random violence - but, then, Patrick survived. . . We both thought about our friend on and off all day.
The first part of the walk was very dramatic - espeically in contrast with yesterday's interminable farmland. We got up to Nine Standards - some say the English built them to look like giant warriors on the horizon in order to scare off the Scots. We tried to take a picture of them from far off - but they wouldn't show up on the camera! Like the Loch Ness monster. Me: "I swear, Cap'n, there were huge warriors, I just couldn't get it on film!" D: "Yeah, McPhee, I've never heard that one before." Up on the hill it was bloody windy - as in fear-for-our-lives windy. We ducked around one of the standards and munched on our Cornish pasties - bought from a lovely bakery this morning, the Bread Shop in Eden Valley, which also sold cottage made
jams, etc. Mmmm.Then a miserable climb down. Miserable because it was very boggy and we had to put our boots on and now my right ankle is so sensitive that each step in my boot is like absolute torture. I chucked the boot wearing when the bogs petered out a bit - though this obliged me to make superhuman leaps at points across the bigger bogs. Still footsore. Sigh.
Trudge, trudge, trudge - but definitely better and shorter than yesterday! We finally (after a little rain and hard concrete road) got to the road by the Beck and walked by some lovely falls and fields, with rabbits!
YHA Keld is very nice, comparatively, in terms of accomodations. D and I have another bunk room to ourselves, overlooking the tiniest of tiny villages that is Keld. Lovely food, too - leek and chicken pie baked to perfection. We sat with a lesbian couple whom we saw at Kirkby
Stephen last night. They are the first of "our kind" we've talked to this trip. We had some laughs about our trudge, the BAD food at Ennerdale (where they stayed also, 1 night ahead of us). Unlike all the other Brits we met, they live in London and like it. I guess for a young, hip couple that's normal (vs. all the fell runners, &c. we've met!). They're both high school teachers and live on a boat in W. London! It was fun chatting with people who felt the same we do re: tiredness, the unrealistic expectations of Wainwright, e.g. steepness of "low" routes, blisters and whatnot.The YHA guy is a hoot. When the desserts came out he had a comment for everyone. D & I were having fruit salad (feeling a little scurvyed by the English diet of meat and meat). "Do you want ice cream with that?" D: "No, thanks." YHA: "Good boy." Then to the women: "You ordered sticky toffee pudding - do you want ice cream with it?" Woman: "Is it warm?" YHA: "No, ice cream is cold."
Now it's Tiger Balm and Bed Time. I am bit anxious about the boot wearing, since my ankle makes it near impossible. Hopefully I can get away with trainers tomorrow.
The teeny village of Keld - view from our window
The joys of laundry!
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