Eden Way Day 5

Langwathby to Appleby – 0 miles!

A quick update from last night. I had an excellent Steak and Ale pie for tea, with lovely, rich gravy and some excellent hand cut chips. It was almost as good as the double steak burger I’d had the night before in the F&P, that came with some super sized onion rings and it was so big I could hardly finish it. The most disappointing meal so far has been at the most expensive place on the walk.

I’m staying in the Shepherds Arms in Langwathby and like many places they’ve outsourced their WiFi provider to some ‘free WiFi’ service that wants your email address or your Facebook account or some other data raping portal into your life. So I logged in with jdhdhhdbd@ndbfbbdbfb.com and hoped they didn’t send a verification code! I think I’ve got away with it. The downside is that although the bandwidth isn’t too bad, the connection is very flaky and I find myself having to reconnect every hour or so. I did at least manage to watch City rip Everton a new one (3-1) and leave us needing to beat United next week to win the Premier League title, a dream finish, to rival our first title of the modern era where we left it to the point where Ferguson thought he’d won it, only for Aguerrrrrrooooo to snatch it away! It’s a great time to be a City fan!

The weather today seems to be the best so far, with the exception of the morning of Day 2, which was pretty much perfect. There’s no sign of wind in the trees and there’s blue sky showing through the clouds. The breakfast was superb, there’s no menu to choose from which is great, you just tell them what you want and within 10 minutes or so it arrived. I asked for the Full English with no tomatoes or mushrooms, you can see below what I was presented with!

There’s no black pudding unfortunately, but the beans (that should not be there) are safely corralled in their own container. They were still there at the end of the meal too!

Today’s walk report is going to be somewhat blighted by the fact that I’ve decided not to walk anywhere! I had a long think last night about my left foot and how best to protect it, while still continuing along the path. I was pretty sure the 16 miles to Appleby that I should have been doing today, would have left me in agony and probably in a position where I’d be more likely to abandon the walk completely. The last 2 or 3 of the 12 miles I did yesterday were pretty painful, so I imagine another 4 miles beyond that would be much worse, not to mention that the first 4 miles are along the road.

So I hatched a plan. I’m in the Shepherds for two nights, because of the lack of a suitable place to stay in Appleby. The idea had been to walk to Appleby today and get the train back to Langwathby this afternoon, spend a second night in the Shepherds, then get the train back to Appleby on Monday to start the walk to Kirkby Stephen. Instead I’m going to skip the long section into Appleby and take a rest day. I’ll come back and do this section in a couple of weeks.

That leaves me a day to rest the foot, it avoids the 16 mile section and leaves me with 12 miles on Monday and 13 miles on the final day on Tuesday. I’m pretty sure I can manage those mileages, especially at the end of the walk.

I shall probably be bored stupid today. I’ve never taken a rest day on any of my previous long walks, not even on the Pennine Way, so I’m at a bit of a loss about what to do. I have some films on my phone, so I’ll probably watch a couple of them. I may try a wander over to the little shop in the village and see if they have any tape or plasters for my toes. Other than that I’m just going to sit with my feet up and watch the world go by.