Day 12 to Ingleby Cross (10th day hiking - 32K)

Before we talk about today, we must add an addendum to yesterday. We had quite the experience! Leaving Richmond, we stopped at a grocery store for provisions. We were excited by the advertised fare: Squirrel Pie, Pigeon Pie, and Wow Wow Beef Pie - all with small print, 'may contain small bones and shot'. We gave it a miss and stuck to standards. We walked a lovely while to our booked B&B, the Hildyard Arms. We arrived at 4:20, to find everything locked up tight and a sign saying they open at 7:00pm. Anita scoured the village and finally found a woman pruning her roses who pointed out the landlord's home. He wasn't there, of course, as he is a professor at some university, but the Gardener, Neil, or Badger, to the locals, rustled up some keys and let us in. Spooky!! We were the only guests. At 7:00pm the bartender and his wife arrived and all the rest of the regulars. They were kind enough to order 'take away' for us. Unfortunately, this B&B does not include breakfast. We never did figure out what that second B was for. When the pub closed at 11, they locked us in for the night ( we did have keys and could get out!). In the morning we locked the place up and deposited the keys in a designated jar. Today, after stopping for breakfast at a real hotel, an hour away, we had a long walk, 32K leaving the Swale river behind with the Cleveland Way ahead of us tomorrow. This was prime English farmland, an area called the Vale of Mowbray. The farms became more prosperous as we walked, we could tell by the size of the tractors. Crops have been harvested but we saw corn and what looked like a field of potatoes. The trail was sometimes a dark green stripe through a pasture or a flattened trail diagonal over a summer fallowed field. Robin, if you are reading this, lots of dairy cows, Holsteins. We have left the stone fences behind, replaced by a new favorite, Spinnies. We have learned a few new words, a squeeze stile (a break in the fence too narrow for sheep), a metalled road (like asphalt, without the topcoat) as well as an unmade trail (a path). Lunch was a picnic outside the White Swan at Danby Wiske (lowest point above sea level on the trail). Jill, no more dead bunnies; apparently there is a bunny disease which accounts for all the corpses. The weather is blustery, occasional showers; the weather behind us (in the Pennines) looks much worse. Tonight we are booked into a regular pub, the Blue Bellingleby Cross, at Ingleby Cross, one that serves meals. We even have a small 2-room suite with ensuite too. Post tomorrow is uncertain, we are staying at Beak Hill Farm along the Cleveland Way.