August 14, 2000: Catterick Bridge to Danby Wiske
In the churchyard at Bolton-on-Swale
the Lees examine the Jenkins monument.
The Lees and I now had to complete just the last third of Wainwright’s route – choosing the summer of 2000 for this task, and bringing the whole project to an end in a rush. I therefore made all the reservations and also arranged for the Sherpa Van Company to transport our bags on all but the first and the last days of the outing. So Tosh had just the trains to book and we were ready to set out on Monday morning, August 14.
I was very excited to be getting this last expedition on the C-to-C route under way – though the heavy pack on my back (in spite of all my efforts to curtail the bulk of this burden) did seem to be a shock when I lofted it shortly before 8:00 as I headed for the Maida Vale tube stop. Kings Cross was very crowded and there was already a long queue for the 9:00 Edinburgh train. I wasn’t worried – because we had seat reservations – but there was no sign of the Lees. I bought some snacks and a bottle of water to drink on the spot and searched the vast throng, Harold making an appearance only at 8:50. Tosh was in the loo. We didn’t have to rush aboard, however, because our train was about twenty-five minutes late in leaving London – though my anxieties over missing a bus connection in Darlington began to mount because of this slow start. As it was, the train hadn’t been properly cleaned after its previous journey.
When we did get under way we had a journey of some two and a half hours through a grey England. The Lees read the papers, some of which were passed my way, and Tosh read the New Scientist. On arrival in Darlington I made enquiries on the platform about where to catch the Richmond bus and we had soon left the station for the same street I had used so many times to get down to the Darlington Bus Station on my Pennine Way walks. It wasn’t raining but you could tell that it had done so recently. I found a bus shelter (no schedule attached) and two soldiers from Catterick Camp informed us that we had just missed a bus. I had looked up times on the Internet and I did expect another along eventually but it wasn’t too pleasant standing out here, waiting in my t-shirt. A bus came up the street in the opposite direction and a cab driver who was parked in a line of taxis across the street shouted that it would turn around – but this intervention gave me an idea.
“Hey Tosh,” I said,” I’m surprised you haven’t been across the street to ask how much it would cost for a cab ride to Catterick Bridge.” She was soon doing just this. We had paid £2.10 apiece for a bus ride from Richmond a year ago plus £6.00 for a taxi from C.B. back to Richmond so Harold and I now discussed how to judge any figure Tosh might come up with in this light. “If it’s forty quid I think we’ll wait for the bus; if it’s twenty, however,” I said, “we’re in business.” When Tosh signaled that the price was £15 Harold and I had no hesitation in darting across the street and putting our bags in the boot of the taxi of one Barry Warcup. It was beginning to drizzle again.
Barry was a most unusual chap, a huge fat man who had only put his cab on the street today because the rain had spoiled his fishing. He told us that there had been torrents of water coming down recently. He was clearly lonely, having been at the station for three hours without a fare, and he drove very carefully and slowly so that he had time to tell us all about his efforts to keep his weight under control, the death of his mom, and various childhood adventures – like the time he pulled up the tatties along with the weeds and couldn’t sit down for days. We got to the Bridge House Hotel at 12:20 – about half an hour before I expected to be here – and this gave us the opportunity for a leisurely lunch at the same spot where we had stopped at the end of Day 14.
The same friendly bar lady was present and we settled down among the businessfolk and the occasional walkers; an Australian with a trekking pole came in with his wife and, seeing our bags asked, “Is this the hiker’s haven?” I had a delicious cod and chips and the Lees received permission to finish off with a cup of coffee. I drank two Diet Cokes. Tosh, incidentally, settled all accounts as official treasurer of the trip – so that she could send me my bill when it was all over.
We left at 1:30. It was still grey but there was no moisture falling on us; what had fallen, however, had produced a very clammy atmosphere and I was soon perspiring, though perhaps I would have done so anyway as I now had eight and a half miles to walk in full pack – something of a rarity in these days. We crossed the bridge itself and turned right on a path through meadows bedecked with lovely wild flowers, the Swale off to our right. At a gravel works (where the path passed a conveyer belt) we left the river behind and took to the B6271, following it in the direction of Scorton. Tosh and Harold got behind here, making some adjustments to their many layers of clothing, and when they started up again they were followed by a girl with a yellow Lab, out for a walk. We were pursued by this couple down a lonely stretch of tarmac and onto Flat Lane, which deposited us in the village of Bolton-on-Swale.
Here we headed over to St. Mary’s Church, where I wanted to see the memorial to Henry Jenkins, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records and local lore, lived for a 169 years, from 1500 to 1669. We took our packs off in the churchyard and had a look around and met some Australians who had come by car. The chap said that his wife was actually a descendent of the long-lived Jenkins but that this was her first visit to the site. We talked to her for a while and then used the back gate to leave the churchyard.
Soon thereafter a stile invited us to escape, for a while, the many miles of road walking that Wainwright had found both necessary and irksome when he planned his original route. I still had xeroxes of Wainwright’s book with me (I would give the Lees these to read at the outset of each day’s march) but I was using Hannon’s guide, which I usually kept in my back pocket.
Stiles put us face to face with the handiwork of a chap I shall call the Birdman of Blaxton, an idiot who had used a marker pen to deface dozens of wooden objects with his brand of teenage drollery, much of it vaguely sexual in nature (and sexist and gay-bashing) and all of it hateful. “Help, I’ve lost my Prozac!” was about as witty as it got, but all of it was silly and none of it belonged on the Coast-to-Coast Path. We first saw it as we edged our way along the Bolton Beck, an occasionally charming but usually muddy stream that lead us into a grain-choked field. A brief drizzle began here but we persevered without donning wet gear and after we had found a bridge and crossed the stream it stopped.
Harvest scene, Whitwell Moor
We made our way through farmland in a southerly direction, crossing the access road to Layland’s Farm, and turning left on Ellerton Hill to begin a three mile trudge on tarmac. There wasn’t much traffic, however, and we found the countryside to be far more pleasant than the agri-phobic Wainwright had. After passing between Hodber Hill and Fatten Hill Plantations we paused for some liquid and I told Tosh that she had just completed her 1900th mile. As we turned southeast on Whitwell Moor there were huge bales of hay rolled into circles in the field on our right
A mile later we had reached the hamlet of Streetlam, where we looked for another off-road escape route over a nearby stile. The local landowner had put up a sign confirming a right of way through the mulch of a horse’s exercise yard – and inviting walkers to use a narrow fenced strip of grassland immediately outside this area instead. This we did, having no desire to mix it up with the horses, even though arrows at both ends confirmed our right to do so. Tosh noted a sign posted by the landowner at the opposite end, “Walkers, Have a Nice Day!”
I pose in front of the White Swan, Danby Wiske
Our route carried us over a number of stiles as we walked over fields belonging to Streetlam, West and Middle Farms, but eventually we were back on tarmac for a climb over Park Hill (most of this day was very level) and into the village of Danby Wiske. It was 5:30 and we decided to have a drink at the White Swan, where they were also expecting us for dinner. I had a half lager here and we met a number of other walkers, whose boots, like ours, were piled in the vestibule. There was a stuffed leathery lady and her bespectacled companion (who was already longing for a sight of the North Sea), the Australians we had met in Catterick Bridge, a single suntanned camper who was taking refuge in the pub after a very wet night, and a couple from Bristol who were also staying at our b&b – all of them doing the walk in one go and all of them at a faster pace than our geriatric trio. We encountered all these people on the trail over the next few days.
We then put our boots back on for another half mile along the road to Oakdene, where Mo Elenor presided over a very tidy b&b establishment. There was no en suite, but we weren’t too inconvenienced. The Lees sent me in for the first bath and at about 7:15 (still conservatively carrying our rain gear in our day packs) we walked back to the pub for our evening meal. I had a chicken curry and jam sponge and custard, very wholesome pub food. The walkers seemed to share space comfortably with the locals, who were intent on a dominoes tournament and the publican became more outgoing as the evening progressed.
We left the White Swan at about 9:30 – the last glow of light in the west and on our right a huge harvest moon glowing intently. We were pretty tired and I didn’t get very far into my articles from The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books before turning off my light.
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