Kirkby Stephen to Keld - August 9th

Today’s walk from Kirkby Stephen to Keld was ladies’ day. Rich and Gary took a rest day and, instead of walking, taxied to our lodging outside the village of Keld. Before setting out from Kirkby Stephens this morning we stopped at the local outdoor store and bought some gators. We had been warned by our innkeeper that the route today through the moors would get pretty wet and boggy and gators would keep the water and mud from flowing over the top of our shoes.

Leaving Kirkby Stephen - only108 miles to Robin Hood's Bay

Our walk started almost immediately with a 4 mile steep uphill climb past the stone quarry up to Nine Standards Rigg. Not only does this hilltop contain nine ancient stone cairns, but it is also Britain’s watershed, meaning rain falling on the western side of this hilltop flows toward the Irish Sea (where we started our walk) and rain falling on the eastern side flows toward the North Sea (where we’ll end our walk).

Quarry and valley beyond

From the top of Nine Standards Rigg there are two routes down: the blue or red route. There’s also an easier green route, but that doesn’t go to the top of Nine Standards. The locals recommended we take the red route as it tended to be a little less boggy. Given the bogginess we encountered on the red route, I don’t want to even imagine what the blue route was like! There were many times we sank so deep in the muck our shoes would have been filled with water and mud were it not for our gators.

Five of the nine standards

View of the moors as far as the eye can see

We did get off-route once as we worked our way down the moor trying to avoid the boggiest sections. We had no turn-by-turn directions today, but instead had to rely on our map and GPS tracking. It took us at least 45 minutes to find the trail again and continue on. Walking through boggy moors for 3 miles is much more tiring than one might think, even if it’s downhill!

Once we got down off the moors, we still had another 4+ miles to our lodging, the last mile of which was a steep uphill climb. I think we were all pretty tired by the time we reached Frith Lodge, but also pretty proud of ourselves that we had navigated our way through the moors with minimal trail markings.

Trudging through the muck





Trying to get our bearings
Pam and I trudging up the last hill to our lodging



Made it!

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