Day 4 – Reeth to Richmond – Sweet Time

Today I walked a mere 10.5 miles. I left Reeth just after 9am and arrived at 66 Frenchgate in Richmond at 4PM. That tallies to a measly 1.5 miles per hour. MACS, the company that’s booked the walk for me, estimates that one should arrive in Richmond about one and one half hours earlier. But who cares about that?

What has dawned on me during this trip is that there is extraordinary value to be realized from being entirely on one’s own. There is a true sense of liberation that one experiences when you have only yourself to answer to. There is no one else to please or to impress. There is no one else that demands or needs my assistance. There is no companion to prompt feelings of competition or judgment.

On today’s walk, I was free to walk at a pace that accommodated sore and tired legs. I was free to stop at intervals and for reasons that were entirely my own. If a bench invited me to sit, I accepted without hesitation or guilt. When inattention caused me to miss a turn in the trail there was no embarrassment to be felt at having to correct the error by taking 20 minutes to scramble up a field with a nearly vertical grade to rejoin the route.

In short, I took my own sweet time to get to Richmond. And that is the very picture of personal liberation. In thinking about this today, it occurred to me that the same lesson can be applied to how one chooses to live life – especially at my age. So much grief is experienced when widowhood comes a’knocking or when children and grandchildren leave the nest. But each such episode delivers you closer to the solitary state where self-reliance becomes a deliverance – a liberation.

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Today’s trek was undertaken beneath sunny skies accompanied by a cooling breeze. When I left the hotel I was wearing my usual gear of two layers on the bottom and three on top. Once I emerged in Marrick after the wrong turn and a slightly scary recovery in that vertical field, I stopped and shed my zip-up fleece and my windbreaker. But not long afterwards, when I found myself crossing windswept fields, I got chilly and put the fleece back on.

I crossed field after field with sheep as my sole companions. There was scant human contact throughout the day but three of those brief encounters are memorable. The first was a coast to coaster who passed me when I stopped on the sidewalk in Reeth about 100 yards from my hotel. I had stopped because my Apple Watch had just informed me that I had left my iPad behind and urging me to go and find it. The hiker who was a woman I met briefly in Keld asked what was wrong and I told her. She said only “Good notice” and kept chugging along. Of course I had left my iPad behind. It was in my suitcase where I had placed it about 20 minutes earlier. Doh!

The second brief meeting was with Alan who stopped to chat in the middle of a large field just outside of Marske. He was hoofing up and I going down. I think he stopped as much to take a break as for any other reason. He is a 72-year-old Englishman who lives somewhere on “the east coast” and once did a C2C round trip – East to West and then back again. He has also done a 2000 mile (not a typo) hike along the seaboards of England and Scotland. Rested and with stories finished, we shook hands and went on our ways.

The third encounter happened as I was getting confused by the directions that Google Maps was giving me to this guest house where I am sitting now. I found myself in the middle of a hospital parking lot which the map assured me was the correct path. Just then a pretty girl emerged from her car and began walking in the direction I seemed to need to be going. I asked her for directions to 66 Frenchgate and she said, “I’m going there. Walk with me.” I couldn’t say no and with her help I got here by the fastest route. She departed my company at LaPiazza, the Italian restaurant at the base of this street where she was on her way to work. Since I had planned to eat Italian tonight, I asked if the food was good and whether gluten free pasta was available. She answered yes and yes. She offered to book my table for one at 5:30. Her name is Libby.

And that was my day. In about an hour, I will call home to express birthday greeting to my dear, dear friend Bella. Today is her Sweet 16th!! That’s a lot of dog years.

Tomorrow is scheduled to be the loooong schlep over to Ingleby Arncliffe with the notorious crossing of the A19. We’ll see how that goes. Jeff from Florida and I had discussed a Plan B.