Day 13 to Beak Hill Farm (11th day hiking - 17 K)

It is 4 pm and we are sitting in our upstairs room at Beak Hills farm, a working farm, looking out our window at green dales and sheep in all the fields we can see. This farm has 300 breeding sheep, 600 head in total, a smaller than usually herd due to a hard winter. Today, we hit the North York Moors, a national park (before, we were on the Yorkshire Dales). We intersected two other walks today, the Cleveland Way and the Lyke Wake Walk (you have 24 hours to finish the 67K to get a 'coffin badge'). These hills are not as dramatic as the Lake District, rolling up, with steep step downs; the ups begin in woods, and are soon replaced by gorse and heather. As you rise, the winds pick up until it feels like a full gale on the tops. Fortunately, we walked all day in sun and the trail was dry. We have seen interesting stone markers carved with the initials of former land owners. This was an easy day, 17km, ahead of two 30 plus days to get us to the end! Amazingly, we have managed to walk this far, (240kms) with no blisters but mainly very tired knees by the end of the day. We continue to walk with many familiar faces, as well as new walkers come and go, depending on the numbers of rest days they have built in. (The number of rest days we built in was zero!) We all have "names". We are the "Canadians", others we have named are "Yorkshire man", "German couple", "white haired couple", "red jacket" and Emily, the one person we actually know the name of! In the middle of our fairly remote walk, we continue to run into things like tea shops. Today's was "Lord Stones" where we had a bowl of leek and potato soup. We passed up dessert as Anita was carrying fruitcake from lunch yesterday at the White Swan. It was a busy little spot with lots of cars in the parking lot reminding us that civilization is never that far away. While we spend a considerable amount of time walking remote trails we do encounter traffic. Like yesterday when we had to cross a very busy 4 lane highway at an uncontrolled intersection, not unlike trying to cross the QE2 on foot. Not sure if we will be able to post tomorrow as it will be a very long day. Anita and Jane. P.S. Jill, we can't find a way to change the blog settings on the iPad, thanks for your help though!