DAY FOUR – Leyburn to Hawes

The bravery on day four started in the pub climbing down the two flights to breakfast of stairs on our sore feet. We’ve stayed at the pub before and the owner was there again serving breakfast, a real character who added positively to the whole experience.

We set off on our route and within minutes Liam had one of his ‘great’ ideas to take a short-cut. Being the mature and calm voice of reason, I politely queried his decision. He was sure that it was right though, so I was reassured. Liam’s short-cut was a walk down a flowing river and I felt that it was important to let him know what I felt about this entire arrangement.

After 25 minutes of arguing we proceeded to the next part of the walk which was a really a nice stretch along the river bank. This part of the walk is around nine miles and it takes in part of a stretch used by the LDWA for challenge walks. It’s one of my favourite stretches along the entire coast to coast route and it dropped us into a cafe at a tourist site.

The cafe is another place that we’ve visited before and I felt that I needed some health snacks, more of which in another post. We treated ourselves to forty minutes in there before moving on to the next 11 miles of the walk. The first part of this is more walking by the river and our route across the river was blocked due to the flooding of the stepping stones.

This is really where our technical coast to coast started to fail, as the ideal routes are blocked by flooding. We have decided to carry on walking, but we’re going to do some different routes that take in a few more pubs. We’ve both done coast to coast walks, and we’re pleased that we’ve done nearly 120 miles in four days. There are two more days left and there is no now pressure on doing the coast to coast route itself.

The day ended up in Hawes, although the pub we thought we’d dine in was closed. However the meal at our accommodation was excellent, so we were pleased with the choice that we made. I had actually wanted fish and chips from the chip shop, but I always just do what Liam wants as I’m nice like that.

Located by Aysgarth Falls is a rather nice little cafe and tea shop called Mill Race which we visited during our last coast to coast. Not much has changed and I felt that it was time for a sausage roll, but I also felt the need for sugar so made sure that I had a hot chocolate. With marshmallows. And a flake. We were there for nearly an hour, trying to get energy for the rest of the day’s walk which was over half the distance for the day.

I was tempted by an ice cream, but it was quite cold outside and felt that warming up rather colding up was the best plan.

Delicious   🙂

He was happier than he looks here   🙂

Excellent quality hot sausage roll, with some green stuff to the side.

The menu and the remains of the sausage roll  🙂

Some scenery photos from day four, the beautiful walk into the cafe along the river is one of the highlights of the entire trip for me. Liam also couldn’t help but play on the rope swing. Note also the river stream that Liam made us walk down, which I mentioned in the daily summary.