Archery ended on Thursday night with me missing the target and splitting the wooden surround, followed by hitting the inner gold so they didn’t ask me to leave immediately, followed by being presented with my certificate of completing the 6 week course with the advice that this allowed me to join any archery club and not just the Kirknewton one. They emphasised that several times.
Flying to Wick was on the cards for early Saturday morning (if we arrived between 10:25 and 11 we were reminded that this was Wick Airport’s tea break time and we were to make blind radio calls then – and the cafe was closed so it was going to have to be brie and chilli chutney sarnies). The alarm woke me up at 5am, in the middle of a dream about dinosaurs, to find that the whole of scotland was under dark grey cloud effectively stopping any microlight flight north, south wasn’t looking good either and in fact any point of the compass was looking poor. An alternative had to be found and since there was no wind for sailing and no kayaking taking place it was walking.
I had always wanted to go up the strangely named High Cup Nick (it was also supposed to be one of the best walks in England) and it turned out to be only a couple of hours drive away in Cumbria. So far so good, we didn’t have a map so headed into Penrith to buy one to find that the minimum parking was 2 hours for 1.70 with a permanent marker scrawled message “RIP OFF” on the prices. We paid, picked up a map and returned handing our extra time to someone heading to the ticket machine in a Pay It Forward gesture.
Kim was driving through Penrith and I had the sat nav which had run out of power in one hand and my iphone which could not get a signal for Google maps in the other hand – where do I go Kim asks – ‘err dunno I’m lost as nothing is working’. What about the OS map we have just bought which is under your arm? she inquires – err yes – head along this road I replied hurriedly looking for where we were on a huge OS map which didn’t have Penrith on it.
The walk started at Dufton outside the Stag Inn, which gave an incentive to make a round trip returning for dinner and a pint, we strode off with Kim staring at the OS Map working out where the path started and me staring at the rather nice thighs of the shapely woman cyclist looking at the Dufton information board. Kim, with huge rucksack and twin walking poles, was looking so lost at the start some housewife came out and asked if she needed help and pointed her to ‘turn left at the Methodist Church of Dufton and Knock’. So we did, ignoring the Pennine Way and up past Dufton Peak following a well drained miners track up to the top of the hill past a lime kiln and up to a steep track heading to the mine. There was a pole with a warning sign all empty so I assumed that shooting wasn’t on, it was a military area. It was a little further up the road that we saw a red flag lying by the side of the road. – I assumed that It was surprisingly windy in Dufton, considering the weather forecast was for little or no wind, and a venturi effect had caused this to be a lot more and we struggled upwards. We decided to stop for lunch to break the struggle and sheltered behind large boulders to enjoy the brie and chili chutney sarnies, banana and fruit cake.
Strangely enough after lunch the wind had dropped so we made good progress and made the shooting hut at the top near a tarn. Curious Kim opened the red metal door and slipped in through the narrow entrance, I squeezed through following her to find bird feed and a table and benches in the dark. I was wondering why the entrance was so narrow when on closing the door I discovered that Kim had opened the door outwards and not inwards where it actually opened the entire wide entrance. We locked up and headed down to the tarn following the outflow across the shooting moor.
I knew it was for shooting due to the number of wooden shooting boxes and I knew it was a moor because I kept falling into wet muddy boggy patches up to my ankles as there was no longer anything resembling a path as we followed the brown stream for what seemed like forever. Then I heard the sound of a shotgun – we moved a bit faster – at least Kim was dressed in a bright red outfit so they might go for her first as I kept low and followed her dropping down to the stream and making several wobbly crossings over brown waterfalls. This was a long and tiring trail but it finally emerged at a gorgeous gorge and we came across the first people we had seen since the navigating housewife of Dufton. The river cascaded under the footbridge and we crossed to join the Pennine Way, crossing what looked like a graveyard but were rocks dropped during glaciation.
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