Day 4 - Reeth to Ingleby Cross (33.5 miles)

As we didn't have to worry about packing away the tent we had a lie in and got up at 5.30am!. We just about got ready on time to be back on the route at 6am. The painkillers seemed to do the job and I found the first 10 miles to Richmond (117 miles in total) not too bad at all. Just as we entered the town (the largest on the route) it started to drizzle which eventually turned to rain. We arrived at Richmond at around 8.50am, so we went to the local Somerfield to stock up before trying to find a cafe that was open early. As usual we hit the jackpot and had a lovely English Breakfast. After an hour or so we set off again and the rain more or less had stopped, just occasional drizzle thereafter.

The next leg was 23 miles from Richmond to Ingleby Cross. As we had now left the Dales this section was very flat and mostly on roads before we reached the North Yorkshire Moors. As a result we were expecting to cover this section very rapidly as it is by far the easiest on paper. How wrong I turned out to be!

The first few miles out of Richmond came and went ok, but the pain in my feet returned and was as bad as ever. I had to rest my feet about 6 miles into the journey in Bolton on Swale for 10 minutes where we came across several others doing the C2C. What lay ahead was about 10 miles of road walking and total agony ensued. The terrain was uninspiring (hence no photos) and just ended up meaning that I just concentrated on the pain within my feet (again hence no photos!). I ended up playing counting games where I would promise myself that I would count 4,000 steps or something before we turned off the road etc. It never really worked but I still did it anyway. This should have been prime running terrain but in the end turned out to be as slow as we went. I think Steve was fairing better, but I think his legs were feeling increasingly tired.

We eventually crawled into Danby Wiske where there was a pub and I had a pot of tea to keep me warm. We came across some more C2C walkers in there, a couple of Americans who got there just before us. It did provide light amusement that along with their ham sandwiches they asked for some Marie Rose sauce!

After about half an hour we continued with our journey and my feet were no better, in fact it was getting to the point whether I was seriously beginning to feel that I might not be able to continue. That said I never considered quitting either. Just after resting my feet again after a railway line I said to Steve that I wanted to run the last section. For some reason the pain was not as bad running and we did the last 7km in rapid time - probably saving about 1.5hrs in the process. We eventually reached Ingleby Cross at about 5pm. We stayed in the back garden of a pub called the Blue Bell Inn. The pub was nothing special but had good facilities and of course only a short walk to get some drinks and food! 140 miles in total and 33.5 for the day.

I hoped that was my worst day out of the way...

Blue Bell Inn