I’ve walked the Lyke Wake Walk twice, west to east. When I told my wife I was planning an east-west crossing to qualify as a Master of Misery she said, why bother, you’re there already. But, knowing from my previous two crossings that the LWW was a tough but enjoyable walk, I found a good friend (or at least he was) and set out from Ravenscar at 0530 on Saturday, April 27, 2019. The weather during the day went from ok to poor to bad to diabolical, but we had the kit and we both smiled in adversity (hah!) and ploughed on, arriving at the Lion Inn at 1300. For some reason I can’t quite explain, at this juncture we thought we’d cracked the walk and proceeded to sink a few pints and get down a hearty lunch. Pish, we thought, that’s the back of this crossing broken. Oh poor naïve southerners, oh simple men of the city, oh ye who did not read the upcoming contours and terrain on the map a little better. Still, a few pints of Guinness does wondrous things, and we ploughed on through the driving rain with aches and ouches and blisters beginning to make their presence felt. By Round Hill, however, we knew this east-west crossing was ours for the taking. Let us cut forward two hours, now getting late in the afternoon, and show you two broken walkers, wet through, miserable, bedraggled, chilled, morale in our boots, exhausted, severely unamused, and watch them pitifully struggle up yet another seemingly vertical climb – Hasty Bank, Wain Stones, the lookout point, and then Carlton Bank. And we seemed to be covering no distance at all on the map. It was as devilish an end to any endurance walk ever, absolutely awful, really hard going, and then – no, no, surely not! – the steepest of woodland staircases in the forest on Limekiln Bank. Really you had to laugh. Walking west to east, easy, easy, easy! Walking east to west, my goodness those last ten miles, after a full day on the Moor, are demanding. Had the weather been kinder, or we had been a little more thoughtful in the pub, or perhaps had done some more training … who knows. But for the two of us, that east-west crossing is something else. We finished, finally, at 2050. Based on my own personal experience, I’d add two hours to whatever you might do the W-E crossing in. Master of Misery – I think I might have earned that (please).
GS & JS
Crossing Report 29th/30th March 2019 – Pants to That!!
There’s been one constant factor in my dirging activities since I recommenced Lyke Wake Walking 5 years ago – my ‘lucky’ dirging trousers. Every one of my 25 (maybe it’s 26?) crossings from September 2014 onwards has been achieved wearing the same pair of black jeans. Sadly, my latest jaunt across Blackamore lead to the demise of this much favoured item of dirging attire.
But firstly a warning. Don’t, whatever you do, believe John Kettley, Michael Fish, Paul Hudson or whoever else dispenses the BBC’s distilled weather wisdom these days (I’d make an exception for Keeley Donovan). With a BBC website forecast of a minimum overnight temperature of 8?C for Goathland you might guess a temperature of 6? maybe 5? on Wheeldale Moor? Don’t believe it for a minute – thick frost and very bracing conditions were what I got in the early hours from Blue Man eastwards; it felt more like minus 5?. The descent down to the stepping stones proved very ‘interesting’ as the frosted grass & bracken were like a ski slope & I had to resort to using the drystone wall as a bannister to avoid a very rapid uncontrolled descent to the beck.
As dawn started to colour the eastern horizon I was making my way up the gravel track towards Lilla. I was using two head-torches (one, as you’d expect, on my forehead, the other handheld) but the lighting conditions were the kind of twilight where the torches make little difference. I put my foot down on the flat verge at the edge of the track but it wasn’t flat at that point and I slipped over on the frosty grass ending up in an undignified heap on the north side of the track. I used the full extent of my ‘Anglo-Saxon’ vocabulary to loudly summarise this situation to myself & any grouse or sheep that might happen to be listening. Then I gathered myself together to resume and discovered: (a) the handheld torch had disappeared into the heather (minor treasure for anyone who cares to look); and (b) a serious wardrobe malfunction had occurred with my lucky pants ripped fore to aft in the most strategic of locations. Fortunately my anorak is knee length sparing the my blushes on the approach of any sheep or of passing motorists on the A171.
On return to base I consulted my sartorial and haberdashery adviser on the prospect of repair of the aforementioned much cherished trousers. The Commander-in-Chief held the prized garment aloft using thumb & forefinger and issued a one word reply ‘Really?’ [I’ll take that as a no then.]