June 29, 1999: Richmond to Catterick Bridge
The King’s Head Hotel, Richmond
The dining room managed to dilute my scrambled eggs on the morning of our last day on the Coast-to-Coast Path and Harold ended up with four poached eggs on toast. I helped myself to a double dose of orange juice as we finished up at about 9:00, returning to our rooms to fetch our packs and bring them downstairs. We were about to complete the earliest stage in a complex travel day, one that turned out to be one of my patented planning triumphs. Tosh paid up and then, on cue, asked if we could leave our packs for a few hours while we did our morning’s walk. The staff now also helped us to order a taxi to pick us up at 12:30 – at our walking terminus for the day, Catterick Bridge. Tosh had been complaining a lot about the expense of this hotel (though it was no more than we had paid on the last day of our walk on the South West Way). We were outside at 9:40.
I found Richmond, with its huge empty heart and its struggling tourist trade, somewhat depressing, but we did not linger. I pulled out my compass in order to comply with the instruction that one leaves the place by its southwest corner. Soon we were heading downhill on narrow streets to reach the Castle Bridge. We were having a look at the Swale from a parapet when Hugh’s legion hove into view. He told us that his van had broken down again and that he was improvising with a morning’s stroll along the river. However he headed upstream with his group and, once we had reached the far side, we turned left and headed down.
Richmond Castle from Castle Bridge
We passed a set of civic loos (Tosh, for once, ignored this opportunity) and crossed a field to enter some woods. Route finding problems began almost immediately as the path reached a meadow on our right – and there seemed to be a choice of routes forward. I was looking for a stile on the right in order to continue the C-to-C path but Tosh seemed intent on following a much more congenial alternative that kept closer to the river – although heading back toward town. Finally I prevailed. An almost hidden stile gave access to a narrow path between barns and we were soon accompanied on our right by a row of houses – a sure sign that we had chosen the right alternative.
Soon we were back on the A6136 and we followed this on a mostly level stretch – using pavement to escape the traffic and the joggers. When the road turned to the right we were invited to take a sharp left on the sewage works access road. I should have put us past the cottage at the entrance to this establishment because the route to the right, which I took to avoid the works themselves, soon led us too far to the right (and too steeply up a hill). It didn’t take me too long to see my mistake and call the Lees to a halt on the hillside. I could see our path running just outside the sewarama and, fortunately, it could be reached by descending the hillside directly.
I was now in the lead for a plunge over a stile into a very wet woods – with MOD warnings not to stray from the footpaths – as if one would want to. The guidebook mentions a choice of routes but I never saw any alternatives and at a number of times I had to guess where to turn uphill in order to regain the light. This was done as we climbed a stile onto higher ground and continued forward on a lovely path to the foundations of some long absent structure (was this Hagg Farm or had I missed this too?) At any rate there were lots of C-to-C signs about: there had been none in 1984, but that was before walking this route had become a minor industry.
We started off on a track and this became a trod through fields and over stiles – with some stretches unclear on the ground. A chap was descending our hill and he paused to tell the Lees about alternate routes and to complain, apropos of nothing, about the laziness and greed of a local publican. We reached the village of Colburn after a small woodland section along a burbling beck. I don’t believe its pub was open and with our route-finding pauses I wasn’t as far ahead of schedule as I wanted to be anyway. The Lees were still bringing up the rear so I paused for a drink of water. There was nothing to complain about the weather today. High clouds chased one another across the sun and it was warm and lovely.
Our route called for us to turn right at the end of the village street, pass through a farmyard, and then turn left on a farm track. This was not a particularly interesting stretch. We were a long way from the Swale at this point and the rutted track was uncomfortable as it twisted first left then right again to approach the confines of St. Giles Farm. We cut a swath through the meadow opposite this establishment in order to emerge at a stile onto the farm’s access road. The Lees kept pausing to drive the mud off their boots but I warned them that they were having a premature fastidiousness attack.
We continued forward on a riverside ledge, this time on the outskirts of Thornborough Farm, and I looked for a path descending beneath the A1 – whose roar we had been hearing for some time now. All I could find was a desperate plunge downhill and we took this slowly. We passed beneath the motorway and beneath a second bridge that carried an abandoned railway. Every time there was a bridge Tosh wanted to know if it was “the” bridge, i.e., Catterick Bridge, our terminus. Some emergency workers were removing a large tree that had fallen into the river as we spotted “the” bridge at last. A half right took us up to the tarmac – across the street we could see the empty stands of the famous Catterick race course. It took some time to get across the whizzing traffic of two highways here, but at 12:05 we were arrived at the Bridge Hotel. We had walked five and a half miles.
The Lees at the Bridge Hotel, Catterick Bridge
It had been part of my strategy to end our walk here – and leave us half a day’s walking to Danby Wiske on our return. It had also been part of my strategy to arrive here at noon so we could have a celebratory pint in the hotel pub before the arrival of our taxi at 12:30. This we did. The place was filling up with businessmen in dark suits and two old couples were having a pub lunch – Tosh was horrified by the way salt went on top of everything. Each of us had a cleanup visit to the loos and at 12:30 we went outside, just a minute before our taxi arrived to whisk us back to the King’s Head in Richmond. We arrived at 12:40, retrieved our bags at reception, and marched over to the bus stop – where we were in time for the 12:54 to Darlington. I used a few extra minutes to combine the contents of my daypack with those of my big pack and Tosh paid the bus driver £2.10 for each of us as we climbed aboard.
The journey, which I had completed so many times in earlier days, was not particularly interesting and after a little over half an hour we were in Darlington. The bus now dropped us off directly at the railway station, where we bought singles to King’s Cross. Our train, A GNER version this time, arrived at 1:50, but there was a long delay while an ambulance arrived to take off a stricken passenger in one of the rear coaches. I had plenty of food to eat in my pack and I had bought a large bottle of Diet Coke to wash it down with. I read the last of the New Yorker articles I had brought with me on this trip, dozed a bit, and even used the mobile phone to give Dorothy my e.t.a. This was about 4:45. I said goodbye to the Lees, after Harold had lifted my pack onto my shoulder one last time, and headed out to the taxi rank. It was pouring with rain but there were plenty of cabs and we were soon bumper to bumper with the rest of motorized London in Camden Town.
We had walked 64 miles on this trip, far more than our April sojourn on the South West Way, and everyone had done well. It had been an enjoyable and relaxing experience and I would soon be at work on planning the last third of the route.
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