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