Ilanarama!

When I woke up, the swelling in my ankle had decreased a bit, but it was still painful enough walking downstairs for breakfast that I knew the smart thing to do would be to take a taxi to Keld, rather than walking the 12 miles. I hung onto Britt's iPad (rather than having him pack it to be transported to Keld Lodge) and bravely told him to enjoy himself on the hike.

To be honest, I was kind of excited about a day to myself, after so much situationally-enforced group togetherness. Plus, it was a cloudy day and it looked like it might start raining any minute. After a couple of lazy hours in the B&B's living room, drinking tea and using their wifi, I was ready to explore Kirkby Stephen.

The first thing I did was head to the pharmacy, to pick up some more ibuprofen - I was almost out of the small supply I'd brought - and some paracetamol with codeine. Then I strolled down to the bridge over the river Eden (the name of the town is thought to be a corruption of 'Kirkby-on-Eden'). I visited the parish church, which has an 8th century carving of the Norse god Loki (one of two known carvings of this type, and the only one in Britain) - it was found among the gravestones that lie against the churchyard wall (which are also quite picturesque, though not as old).



I had a late-morning beer at the King's Arms, and an early-afternoon beer at the White Lion, which had a sign out front:

FREE
wifi and cheap
BEER

Needless to say, I took advantage of both! I had lunch at a tiny cafe in a gourmet-foods store: a smoked-salmon sandwich, a slice of orange cake and coffee. I talked with the owner of the hiking-gear store, Eden Outdoors, who was sitting by the clever planter he'd designed for the front of his store:



Around two in the afternoon I decided it was time to head for Keld, so I went over to B&D Taxi to arrange a ride. It turned out I was just in time, as they hold the contract for school transport and were gearing up to do the afternoon school run, but one of the drivers gave a quick call to the owner to let her know he was running me over to Keld first, and we were off. I sat up front with the driver and we chatted the whole time; he pointed out various things of interest, waterfalls and stone barns and the place where a snowplow went off the road last winter, and told me about his own long-distance walks (he'd done the coast-to-coast and some other routes as well), and about his family (his father's 80th birthday was that weekend, and his children were coming from around the country for a party). All told, it was a worthwhile expenditure of £25, and I got to see quite a bit of the same scenery I would have on the walk.

Keld is a teeny-tiny collection of about a dozen stone buildings. The Keld Lodge, where we were staying, sits by itself on the road above the town; it used to be a youth hostel but is now a B&B, with a bar in the reception room and a couple of picnic tables outside. The manager, a skinny guy who (at least in my eyes) resembled Tobias Menzies, poured me a pint of Black Sheep Bitter, and I went out to sit in the sun, which was just beginning to peek from behind the clouds. Two older couples soon joined me; they had walked six miles up the Swale to Keld from Gunnerside, and would return on a slightly different route, which they said was their favorite hike, and they did it yearly. We talked until they finished their drinks and went on their way. Shortly afterwards, a coast-to-coast hiker came in for a beer, and to use the nearby pay phone to call his B&B to pick him up; then another arrived, then another. I ended having a wonderful time conversing with other walkers (and drinking quite a bit of delicious ale!) until my own group finally started to drift in.

I was hoping that Britt would play 'guest writer' and give me a blog entry for the actual hike on this day, but he's been really busy getting ready for a business trip. I did, however, put some of his photos up on Flickr, so you can see what I missed.

You are probably looking at this post's subject and thinking, "huh, she misspelled 'Air Force', and what does that have to do with hiking, anyway?" And that was my thought when I noticed those words on the map of hikes around Glenridding (same map as linked from the previous post), as Britt and I planned what to do with our second free day.

Over the past several days we'd noticed various 'forces' mentioned in our guidebook and on signs. It turns out that just as 'fell' is lake-districtese for 'mountain', 'force' is lake-districtese for waterfall, from the Old Norse fors. Aira Force is in fact a waterfall formed by Aira Beck; 'beck', I may have mentioned, is lake-districtese for 'stream', and is incidentally a word I learned from reading Rosemary Sutcliff's book The Shield Ring, which is set along Derwent Water, a nearby lake. 'Aira' is also from the Old Norse, meaning 'gravel-bank stream'. So there is the long explanation for the post title, and here is the short one:



( In which we hike to something that is not a squadron of military planes. )

Just the 11 photos at Flickr

As on the previous day, we left from our inn to walk all the way to our next night's lodging, which made me feel a bit more like a Genuine Coast-to-Coastie. Derek came with us again, but this time he gave us gazelles the go-ahead to lope on ahead and take a more interesting route: after climbing to the saddle above Grisdale Tarn (a high lake), he directed us to turn right and go up the steep route to the summit of 2,864-ft high Fairfield Pike. Then we could follow the ridge north to the slightly lower St. Sunday Crag and from there descend near the village of Patterdale and walk the mile or so along the road to Glenridding. Four of us - me, Britt, Kris, and Aleta - opted to do this; the others would descend Grisdale (the valley), an easier and slightly shorter walk.

We were happy to do so, as once the path steepened most of the group slowed considerably. We skipped on ahead, taking a snack break at a lovely little waterfall, then climbed to the saddle, where quite a few other walkers were resting on a stone wall running its length. We could also see a steady line of people on the steep zig-zag of a trail on the far side of Grisdale Tarn, ascending Dollywaggon Pike on the way to climbing Helvellyn, the third highest peak in England.

( Up-up-up! )

14 photos at Flickr

In the morning we had breakfast, packed our things and left them downstairs for the transportation service to pick up, and then met Derek, who would be our local guide for the day. Derek is part of the Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team, and that morning we had no idea how relevant this would be.



( Don't worry, it wasn't me who needed rescuing... )

These and more photos - 12 in all - at Flickr.

So this is it! The beginning of our Coast-to-Coast* walk. (The asterisk is because this particular guided/group trip is the "Connoisseur's Coast to Coast", that is, a selection of the good bits and minimal boring (such as hiking along a roadway) bits, connected by bus. We actually ended up walking only about half the standard distance of 190 miles. We also had our luggage transported by bus, so that we only needed to carry daypacks, but that's quite common even for people doing the full walk.)

( From St. Bees to Cleator )

Twelve photos at Flickr

We got off the train in Newcastle upon Tyne (to give it its full name) and were met by whatistigerbalm and her charming husband, who immediately hustled us off to see the sights. These included the...new castle! (Where new = built in 1172-1177. Because it replaced a Roman fort built on that site in the 2nd century or so. It's all relative!)



( A whirlwind tour )

Or just look at the 8 photos. (ETA: have also added three photos for the next bit of the trip to this set, so you'll get an advance peek!)

The White Rim Trail is a well-known 4WD road approximately 100 miles long which loops between the Colorado and Green Rivers through Canyonlands National Park near Moab, Utah: it descends from the 'Island In The Sky' mesa top down to the level of the White Rim sandstone, which was formed during the Permian period 245 to 286 million years ago. Blah blah blah, a picture's worth a thousand words:



(Okay, I'm cheating here, because I'm not riding on the actual trail but on the sandstone rim. Most of the ride is really not as scary as this makes it look!)

( More about our trip, with [occasionally scary] photos )

On Sunday Britt and I went mountain biking on the Alien Run trail near Aztec, NM. Last year (almost exactly!) I fell hard not much more than 2 miles in, and we took the early turn-around; this year I made it past all the hard parts (well, I walked a few of them!) and only fell once, in deep sand at the top of a climb. Fortunately, sand is a lot softer than rock, and no damage was done. Anyway, we rode the full ten miles and it was loads of fun and we did not get abducted by aliens.

Since I don't have any big running-race plans this spring, I think I'll try to work on my mtb skills a couple of times a week. (Also, I should update my biking icon with my current bicycle, duh.)

The snow-covered mountains behind my head are the La Platas just outside Durango. The high country's still got winter, but it's definitely springtime in the desert!

I haven't been posting much here this winter; I've been running, as usual, and skiing on Fridays, and doing stuff in local politics blah blah blah. Typical winter. But things are going to ramp up this spring!

There's the Canyonlands Half in Moab a week from Saturday; Britt's running the 5-miler, and we decided to bring our bikes and make a weekend of it. Not that I'm going to be full of energy after a half marathon, but. We have to get in mountain-bike shape as we were invited on a White Rim trip in mid-April! Britt and I have done it twice before, but that was back in the 1990s, so it's high time we go again.

We also need to get our rowing arms in gear as we have been invited on two raft trips this spring. One, on the Salt River in Arizona, may or may not happen depending on how much run-off there is this year; we haven't had much snow so things are looking grim. The other is on the San Juan in Utah, one of my very favorite rivers! So we're going to have to get the little boaty-boats ready, and do a few Animas River runs soonish.

Finally, in late May we are flying to Edinburgh, where we'll spend a few days with a net-friend before joining a Sierra Club trip on the Coast-to-Coast walk. Yep, we are going to walk across England! And in style, too. We've never done a group trip like this but hey, we get to stay in B&Bs and have our luggage hauled while we dayhike every day for two weeks, sounds good.

I fell down on the job as far as vacation reporting goes last fall, but we didn't take very many pictures on the Grand Canyon (it was COLD in November!). I promise to do better this spring!

So there was this XKCD comic, which inspired the Up-Goer-Five Text Editor, which allows forces you to write using only the thousand most common English words. And now my friends are using it to rewrite their job descriptions. Bandwagon, jump, whee!

I work in my house, using a computer to reach other computers. These computers make a pretend world inside them, with pretend air and water and rain and land, and then they show what the pretend world will be like in a hundred years or two hundred years or even more. We use this to guess how things might be like in the real world then, because we are worried that it will be very warm, warmer than it is now across the whole world.

Then I take the answers the computer makes, and I pull out each thing (like how warm the air is, or how strong the wind is, or how much ice is at the top and bottom of the world) and put it in a computer place for other people who study the world and how warm it might get.

But what I write about here is usually the things I like that are not work. I run a lot, and I like to run very far. I also like to ride a thing that moves on two round parts that go around when I push other parts of it with my legs. In the summer I walk in the woods and sleep there at night, and in the not-summer (like now) I go to a place where I get pulled up to a high place and I go back down on two long things like wide sticks under my feet.