Previous: C2C Day 9 – Grinton to Catterick Bridge
A note on dates
For your information, I am writing this blog after reaching home. The dates of my posts are the day I posted them, not the days we were walking. We walked the C2C from Saturday 2nd May to Friday 15th May, with 2 nights where we stayed on site and walked locally. The weather as we walked through C2C was unusually cool for May. However, the day before we started C2C – the day we arrived in England – was a glorious spring day, with people outside in shorts and t-shirts. Likewise, four days after we finished (and in fact, the same day we left England), the weather was excellent again. Hmph.
a long day
Today’s route is reputed to be the most boring in C2C. So, like many others before us, we decided to get over it as quickly as possible. The route was fairly flat, with a lot of farming along the way. It rained overnight and then intermittently for the first hour of today’s walk.
Canola/rapeseed field in beautiful bloom
What an old cemetery!
The official route now follows what used to be described in older guidebooks as an alternative route. Which means the C2C is now about a mile longer on this stretch. It is not a good day to do extra kilometers. Additionally, this new route goes directly along a busy road for at least a mile. It’s not nice. I wish we hadn’t followed the signs and instead taken the old route which followed a quiet country lane between Bolton-on-Swale and Danby Wiske. I guess the idea is that this new route will have less pedestrian traffic. But damn, that stretch along the busy highway (next to Kiplin Hall) is pretty awful.
The official route now also involves a 5 mile detour to a pedestrian crossing on the A19. I don’t think many people are using that. Instead, everyone we saw or talked to did it the old-fashioned way: running across the road at full speed. We certainly weren’t going to add an extra 5 miles to our day today, so we packed our packs and ran!
Eleven in Danby Wiske
The White Swan in Danby Wiske is supposed to be a nice pub, but they weren’t open yet and we had miles to go anyway.
Is it cheating?
We were sitting in the village park of Danby Wiske enjoying our elevenses, when a taxi stopped and a couple who were clearly walkers got out. We left before them, but an hour or two later they caught up with us. Turns out they had taken a taxi from Richmond to Danby Wiske. That would have cut about 15 miles off the hike, so of course they seemed pretty refreshed. The woman even commented on how nice the weather was today. It sure was if you didn’t start walking until late in the morning!
Similarly, we met three women from Colorado several times. From what I could understand, they frequently took trains, buses, and taxis.
I guess to each his own, but for me it’s important to go all the way. Others I asked reacted the same way. This is especially true if you’re going to present yourself as if you’ve walked through C2C. It seemed unfair to me to see the Danby Wiske taxi couple in Robin Hood’s Bay celebrating the completion of the road.
This cat accompanied us for a while.
The end is near!
It’s great to enter our third national park – the North York Moors!
Osmotherly, ugh
We opted to go through the usual stops of Ingleby Arncliffe and Ingleby Cross and instead pushed on to Osmotherly. Doing so would put us in a better position to arrive tomorrow at the Lion Inn in Blakey Ridge, which we were excited to get to. But we still had a long way to go to get there.
I highly recommend skipping Osmotherly. It was without a doubt the most hostile place in all of C2C. We ate bad sandwiches from an unfriendly shopkeeper. The owner of a nearly empty pub said they couldn’t accommodate us for dinner. The hotel’s grumpy waiter told us the kitchen was closed and half an hour later a group of four came in and served us. Plus, our host hadn’t turned on the heat and the place we were staying was freezing. The radiators are nice, but they are definitely not fast. Luckily, we ate those bad sandwiches that were supposed to be for lunch tomorrow. It was a disturbing way to end a long day.
Next: C2C Day 11 – Osmotherly to Blakey Ridge
This website contains affiliate links, which means The Trek may receive a percentage of any products or services you purchase using links in articles or advertisements. The buyer pays the same price they would otherwise pay, and their purchase helps support The Trek’s ongoing goal of bringing you quality backpacking information and advice. Thank you for your support!
For more information, visit the About page of this site.
