Day 1, July 2. Lion Inn – trig point on Beacon Hill – road by Loose Howe – Lion Inn: 13h45.
Day 2, July 3. Road by Loose Howe – eastern LWW stone – road by Loose Howe: 13h46.
Total elapsed time to cover entire route once each way: 39h01.
My first two Walks were with my father in the 1980s, unsupported, one each way, then I did a solo unsupported in my twenties in 1992. Having now just turned 60, thoughts turned to setting myself a challenge before too many more years pass and bring inevitable decline. I was reasonably confident I was up to a Lyke Wake Walk (living in Surrey, I’d done 40 miles and 5000 feet in a day by virtue of walking up and down the scarp slope of the North Downs more times than I could count). So could I consider a Lyke Wake Double? The logistics weren’t promising for a straightforward “one end to the other and back” – my wife offered to help support but I wasn’t going to ask her to drive silly distances at silly times of the day. Hence the idea of staying at the Lion Inn, and walking to Osmotherly and back one day, and Ravenscar and back the next – a Double in terms of the ground covered, just not in the right order.
So, day 1, I slipped out of the Lion fire exit at 5am. A couple of squalls blew through on the railway section, but it was mostly just overcast. I’d planned to build in what variety I could, so, inspired by a crossing report from Graeme Noble, from Urra Moor I dropped down to Seave Green, over the south end of Cold Moor, then up along the top of Barker’s Crags. I don’t know if there is an actual path down from them but I just ploughed through chest-high sopping wet bracken and felt like I’d walked through a car wash. Then Green Lane and through Clain Wood to Scarth Nick where my wife met me for the first topping up of water and flapjacks. Up to the trig point (new for me – all my previous walks had started at the stone), then the Classic route back, with from about Carlton Bank up to Clay Bank now in sunshine with blue skies. A sausage roll from the disappointingly non-vegetarian takeaway choice at the Lordstones café – my wife had gone to visit Robert Thomson at Kilburn and Mount Grace Priory – then a second top-up from her at Clay Bank and back along the railway, over Flat Howe, and round the head of Rosedale on the road and back on the lower railway track (through a late return of pouring rain), so as to even up the distances on the two days.
For day 2, I’d negotiated with my wife that 6am was not too unreasonable, so she drove me back round to where those pesky white boundary stones leave the road by Loose Howe. On my previous crossing, before the days of GPS, and doing that section in darkness, I’d strayed away from the stones there. This time, in continuous rain restricting visibility, I once again (and more than once) failed to pick out the next stone and strayed, but thanks to GPS, getting back was easier. The path across Wheeldale Moor seemed better trodden than I remembered, albeit with what looked distressingly like deep motorbike ruts. Thirty years ago I’d strayed off the path here too, and had kipped until dawn, consequently finishing in 23½ hours. The rain finally eased around Simon Howe, and there was almost some blue sky at Fylingdales. My wife met me at Eller Beck, and then at the Beacon Howes radio mast with a toastie from the National Trust café.
Turning back, I was now well into uncharted territory for me in terms of distance. Muscles seemed to be doing all right; little toenails would no doubt fall off later but would be manageable for the day; but the right knee had started day 2 tight and was getting tighter. Perversely, the climbs out of Jugger Howe Beck and Wheeldale Beck were a breeze as you don’t need to straighten the knee so much up steep hills; it was the level-ish slogging on uneven tracks from Wheeldale onwards that took their toll. On the last stretch from Hamer, I once again, despite best intentions, lost the straight route along the stones, it had started raining again, and tiredness was telling because I went knee-deep in bogs several times, which I’d been alert enough to avoid on the way out. Cresting Loose Howe, the moment the waiting car came in sight my brain stopped suppressing the complaints it had been getting from my knee and my finish was definitely more of a hobble than a walk. But 77 miles over two days, by a long way a new mark for me.
A supported walk, in daylight, with the benefit of GPS, is a very different animal from a solo unsupported walk spanning the night, with map and compass; more of a purely physical challenge, less of an engagement with the spirit of the Moors and, I would say, of the Walk. I am very pleased I set myself, and met, a challenge that I can remember in my old age. But it doesn’t really match the quasi-spiritual satisfaction of starting at one end of the Moors and emerging at the other entirely on your own resources.
John Swanson