The Lazy Cherub Enigma: Walk on. Walk Hard.

There is no rest for the wicked and that is a good thing after all the chocolate and blue cheese. Time to lace up and suffer for your sins! I should have buns of steel after this trip…

Day 7 – Orton to Kirkby Stephen – 24.1 km

One thing I need to mention about Orton is their strange obsession with “scarecrows.” Outside of every house and business are life-sized dolls that look frighteningly real. Apparently, every year there is a contest for best scarecrow. Since no crops are grown in this area I am at a loss to the significance of this. That said, I seem to remember an episode of “Taboo” that profiled a man who lives nearby who has an obsession with silicone love dolls. Maybe he is the village mayor? But enough weirdness – time to hit the paths! You know you are off to a good start when right away you take the wrong road out of town. We walked 2 km before a man fixing his roof says “Are you walkers? If so, you are on the wrong path.” Great. Just great. I so need more useless kilometers to make my days meaningful. Soon enough the day did turn out great because...PONIES!!! How can you not love a flock of little ponies to amble through? There are still sheep but we’ve begun to transition into other loveable undulates. We are now entering the world of James Herriot. Sun shining. Fields of buttercups. Farm animals that actually look healthy, happy and not covered in flies and manure. Things were bright and sunny until mid-afternoon where we took a wrong turn (again) and shortly thereafter ended up in another rainstorm. Thought we might get some respite in a tunnel under the railway but that turned out to be a vortex chamber straight from hell. We arrive at our B & B in Kirkby Stephen as per usual – soaking wet and in need of tea and scones. Thankfully, the landlady provides just that at 4 pm in the front parlor. After we shower and change into our finest crap dinner trekking attire, we partake in the British custom of jams, clotted cream and awkward socializing. Then it is off to dinner. God I was SO HUNGRY. By now it was raining so hard I could barely muster the will to walk 20 feet to the Spar supermarket to get a sandwich. We really wanted a hot meal and with Kirkby Stephen being an actual town that should have been an easy feat. There were, after all 3 pubs, 2 chippies, a Chinese AND an Indian takeaway to choose from. Well no – there actually wasn’t. This was Monday and that meant pretty much every food place was closed except for one pub that only had one kitchen person. My blood sugar was at an all time low and I was dealing with so much wind and rain that 5 minutes into our dinner search, I was soaked to the skin – again. One thing you do a lot of when you walk forever in a day is fantasize about the fantastic hot meal you will have at the end of it. One thing that tips you right over the edge is when you realize that said hot fantasy meal is just not going to happen. So on the brink of hypoglycemic insanity I drag my soaking wet body back to the Spar where I see the shelves pretty much empty except for 2 bacon and cheese sandwiches and a couple of boil-in-a-bag stew packets for half price. I have never fantasized about boil-in-a-bag stew and room temperature Strongbow but I guess I am now. Get back to our room, which is now like a sauna because we had cranked the radiators up to inferno level to dry our clothes. Can’t open any windows because the landlady has them all glued shut to keep the gypsies out. It is so hot in the room the air is not moving so I have an anxiety attack and start ripping my clothes off. Ken wraps me in bath towels soaked in cold water (yeah I know – I started out cold, wanted to be warm, now I want to be cold – IT’S CRAZY THAT WAY ON THE WAINWRIGHT!). So there I am on the floor of our room in my underwear, draped in a wet bath towel eating cold boil-in-a-bag stew, drinking luke warm cider. Ken is so hot he decides to cool off by going back out into the storm to go to Spar and get a cold Diet Coke. Problem is, the landlady won’t let him out because there really are gypsies in town and she wants to keep the doors permanently bolted until they leave. Our night ends with us both having cold showers and realizing we have just lived a "Little Britain" skit gone horribly wrong.

Day 8 – Kirkby Stephen to Keld – 17 km

I can sum up this day in four words: Rain and road kill. So remember that rainstorm from yesterday? Well, it was thriving the next morning and we had to endure that for the entire 17 kilometers. The route from Kirkby Stephen to Keld is where one can see the 9 Standards, an ancient man-made structure, featured prominently in Wainwright’s memoirs. Problem is even on a good day, the trek up and out of there is seriously boggy. So much so that in bad weather you are advised to not take that route lest you be swallowed alive by the peat bogs (and it happens – people sink up past their knees on a regular basis and need to be rescued or worse, they sink and then fall over and suffocate.) Our guide book provided us with an “extreme weather alternative” route which we took because dying in a peat bog was just not how we envisioned our last moments together. This route was simply 6 hours of road walking in pounding sleet and wind. Arrived at the Keld Hotel, which is the only place in Keld other than a yurt camp down the road. Our bathroom had a parabolic heating fan above the toilet. You pull the string and for 10 minutes it blast hot air onto you. Then it shuts off and resets for 30 minutes. Every 30 min we sat on that toilet together blasting ourselves with hot goodness. When we couldn’t do that we sat in a fetal position leaning against the radiator. It was one of those I love/hate my life moments. I don’t even remember what we ate that night other than it was not boil-in-a-bag and there were warm buns involved.