Day 9 Grinton to Richmond (10 miles)

Today we knew was going to be an easy day before the longest most boring day tomorrow. We set off before 9 with a weather forecast predicting rain by lunch time. After yesterday we were keen to finish before the rain commenced.

Another walker caught up with us & we got talking, his name was Ian from Manchester & he was 68 years & 51 weeks old, but looked at least 18 years younger. He explained how he came here several times a year to walk & generally didn’t go elsewhere as he wasn’t a confident map reader. We then caught up with the two norwegians that we had seen on & off & all five of us walked & chatted.

We reached the Nun’s Steps (all 375 of them) & Ian demonstrated that he might be 68y & 51 weeks but boy was he fit, he left us all behind! Ian then went off to carry on his walk but said that we might meet him again at Maersk. The walk was largely through farmland with rolling hills, we dropped down to a farm advertising teas but a herd of very frisky cows persuaded us not to go (we’d only been walking an hour anyway).

At Maersk, a pretty estate village, we met up with Ian again & carried on with the rest of the walk, we ascended to Applegarth Scar & it started to rain, once we had donned our waterproofs it stopped. Those Yorkshire raingods are a devious bunch!

Applegarth scar

We then had a short walk through a woods before we started to descend to Richmond, time taken a mere 4 hours. Mind you tomorrow could well be 9 hours!

Richmond market square

We had lunch in a tea room in Richmond square (hard life this C2C) & then went to our accomodation & thankfully they were able to do our laundry before our bag disintegrated from the toxic effects of the dirty clothes.

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