Another Long Walk: Day 13: Another Dreary Day....

September 6, 2024: I slept well during the night, but woke up to gray, foggy skies. The forecast had called for sun. Argh!!! Well, maybe it will clear up later. The forecast suggested it might, but at this point, I didn't have high hopes. I looked at the weather forecasts, but I had a deep mistrust of them.

I got a relatively early start to the day and was on the trail and hiking by 7:30am. I didn't even manage to hike a full mile before I took my first break for the day, however.

Mainly because the trail passed by a Shell station on a super busy road and I wanted to take a look in the convenience store. Toilets! Benches! Tables! Outlets! The place even had showers--which was a genuine surprise because it was otherwise a pretty normal Shell station, not a truck stop!

This Shell station is a popular place for hikers to stop since it is located just a minute or two off the trail.

I wanted to fill up with water as well and when I asked if there was a faucet I could use, the girl working at the counter pointed me to where cars could fill up with air and water. That seemed weird to me, but okay.... Except when I approached it, I noticed a sticker on the machine that said that the water dispensed from it was not meant for human consumption. Really? Why would the woman send me here if we weren't suppose to drink this stuff? Sheesh. Did it need to be treated? I could do that. Or was it one of those things where the water was probably fine but they added the sticker as a "cover your butt" kind of thing? Or was there really some sort of contaminant in it--some special additive that was good for filling up one's radiator but not something one should be drinking?

I didn't know, so I chose not to use it. I could still fill up from creeks if I had to and just treat the water. But I was a little annoyed that the woman would have even sent me to get water from here in the first place. I couldn't have been the first hiker to ask about water.

I would have loved to sit at the counter for a couple of hours eating snacks and charging my devices, but it was way too early in the day for a full-sized break. According to my GPS, I had only walked about 0.7 miles for the whole day! Definitely a little too early for a two-hour break!

I did buy a replacement set of sunglasses because the "arm" on the one I had started falling off regularly. I also bought a sandwich for later as well as a fruity drink. And, of course, I definitely made use of the toilets. =)

But it was back to hiking! Crossing the road was a bit hair-raising with the fast traffic, but there was a center divider in the road which made it considerably easier to cross in one direction, then wait in the safety island before crossing the traffic in the other direction.

The traffic across the highway was heavy and fast, but this safety island between the two directions made it a lot easier and safer to cross.

The trail headed steadily uphill, eventually connecting with and overlapping the Cleveland Way route, another national trail in England.

The gray skies lingered, as did the wetness. It wasn't quite as wet as yesterday, but the side of my face facing the wind seemed to collect water which would periodically drip. The side of my face away from the wind was completely dry. The wind, however, was merciless, trying to knock me over with every step.

A few hours later, I walked a short way off the trail to Lordstones for lunch. If the weather was nice, I would have preferred just taking a break on the trail and eating food out of my pack, but the given the dreary, cold and wet weather and the brutally punishing winds, I preferred going indoors.

I ordered the loaded fries, thinking it was more of a snacking kind of option than a full meal which I wasn't really in the mood for but was astonished when a massive bowl of it came out that I had no hope of finishing on my own. The menu didn't say anything about smaller portions, but that was a crazy order for just one person. Why didn't they warn me how large it was when I ordered?! A half order of the loaded fries would have been sufficient as a meal by itself.

I ate what I could, but didn't even try to eat it all. That would just make me miserable. I paid the bill then headed back to the trail to keep hiking.

The loaded fries was a meal meant for a party of 4!

At this point, the trail led up to a ridge which I knew would be highly exposed to the brutal winds and because of the fog, would provide nothing in terms of a view, so I decided to take the alternate route that my guidebook mentioned that followed more-or-less parallel to the main trail, but followed the contours of the slope rather than going to the top of ridge and over several peaks.

This was a bit of a challenge since my guidebook didn't provide detailed maps of the alternate route and the GPS coordinates that I downloaded didn't include the alternate at all, so I did take a wrong turn that I probably wasted the better part of 30 minutes on before I was able to retrace my steps back to the correct alternate route. I grumbled the whole time. Totally wasted effort for no good reason at all!

According to my guidebook, today was the first day I would be able to see the North Sea, but I never saw it. Not even a hint of it.

Nope, no views today! The whole day was foggy and miserable.

Eventually the alternate reconnected with the main route, and I continued onward. This section was especially easy because the trail was clearly an old railroad bed and therefore completely flat and nearly straight as an arrow for miles on end. I could walk fast, but there was no protection against the wind which was exhausting.

I had wanted to wild camp somewhere along this section, and I kept looking for somewhere that provided at least a little wind protection and found nothing, so I kept hiking and hiking....

Eventually, I reached the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, which allowed camping in a nearby field. I arrived late in the day, not long before sunset, after a punishing 23.0 miles according to my GPS. It was exhausting.

I entered the bar and restaurant to ask about camping. Normally they allow hikers to camp in a nearby field, but the woman helping me told me to go ahead and set up my tent in the beer garden. Because of the weather, nobody else was using it this evening and it was more protected from the wind and rain than the open field was. The lack of sheep poop was an added perk. =)

Awesome! The beer garden made a lovely place to camp. The stone wall completely encircling it did a great job in breaking the brutal wind, and the building on two sides of it helped as well. As patrons came and went, I wondered what they thought about seeing me setting up my tent there. =)

I would end up camping in the beer garden of the Lion Inn.

After getting the tent up and changing into my camp clothes, I went into the bar and ordered a Pepsi. I was still not hungry at all after eating the enormous pile of loaded fries earlier in the day, although I did have a small snack out of my bag. The main reason I went inside was just because it was more comfortable to sit in a chair at a table where I could write in my journal, get on the wi-fi, and plan out tomorrow's hike.

A couple of hours later, I returned to my tent and retired for the night. Thus ended another day on the trail.....

What's the deal with free range eggs out here? I'd rather the chickens be free range!

140 miles done, only another 50 or so to go!

Was I walking by a prison or something?!!!

Kind of weird, right?

It's a hedgehog!

The views sucked because of the fog, but some of the photos really turned out quite pleasant with the fog lingering in the trees and the light streaming through.

The top plaque asks that you not make your own plaques and attach them to a bench of your choice but to go through the proper channels. But I read that and thought, "That is brilliant! It never even occurred to me that I could just add my own plaques to any random bench or table I felt like!" Now I have this weird urge to do precisely that.....