Sedburgh, Kendal, and Stavely to Windermere

And now we’ve been home more than two weeks it will be three weeks tomorrow it’s 3 weeks today. Which means I’m already behind on telling you what we’ve been doing since we’ve been back and it’s kind of a lot.

But, back on the Dales Way, on Thursday the 8th, we were leaving Dent on the way to Sedbergh, England’s book town. It’s about 5 miles from Dent to Sedburgh, and our itinerary had us walking beyond Sedburgh about another 5 miles to a place called Beck Foot. Then we would be taxied back to Sedbergh to spend the night, since there were no B&Bs available in Beck Foot. At breakfast in Dent, we had decided to cancel the taxi, and only walk as far as Sedbergh. The Sedburgh to Beck Foot part sounded nice, the guide book said, After Sedbergh, the character of the Dales Way changes again as it passes through the gently rolling landscape of the Eden Valley to Beck Foot. But we still decided we could miss it.

We set off from Dent, got a last coffee at the Heritage Center, and mostly stuck to the road.

At one point we left the road and hung out by a bridge. The path started looking like this, so back to the road we went.

We arrived in Sedburgh around 1:00, way too early to go check in at the hotel. But early enough for a coffee place I had seen online that initially I thought we’d miss because it closes at 3:00, Mug Story. Like pretty much everyone in Sedburgh, they had books, too. Mark had a mocha and I had tea, and a couple of cakes, a British flapjack which is a bar cookie, and a blueberry bakewell. We chatted with some other walkers who had had a hard day on the Pennine  Way,  getting lost and wet. They were using the original ordnance maps that have so many intersecting trails, it’s easy to get off your trail and onto another.

There was a public toilet across the road from The Mug Story, and it was about the cleanest and best maintained one I had been in the whole trip, so I left a donation in the box as requested. There was even a sink for washing off your boots.

Sedburgh has a pretty famous school, established 1525, and because we arrived around lunch time, there were a lot of kids in their school uniforms walking to get coffee and snacks, like we were.

We went to one of the bookstores, the biggest one, Westwood Books. There were rather too many closed storefronts in town.

Eventually we made our way to our hotel for the night, the Dalesman. we were hoping we could find a place to do laundry – we were both running out of socks. The Dalesman didn’t have the ability, but suggested we go to the sporting goods & book store across the street, Sleepy Elephant. They were about to close, but we bought a 2-pack of socks and chatted with the owner about bookshop.org. She was not a member but Westwood Books is.

Despite not being able to do laundry, the Dalesman was definitely one of the best hotels of the trip. The room was huge, the bed was huge, the bathroom was huge.

We got into doing a late afternoon soak if a tub was provided. The tub in Dent was pretty good, but this one was better.

I can’t remember what I had for dinner but it was good. Wild mushroom pasta maybe? Oh I remember – they had a smoker and Mark got one of the plates from the smoker and I think I did have the pasta. One of Mark’s sides, the sauteed broccoli, I believe, came late, so they gave us free dessert. It was some kind of molten lava cake. Very chocolate.

It rained all night; we could hear it in our fancy room. The weather forecast said rain all day, too. We were wondering how the next day, the walk from Beck Foot to Burneside, would be. On one hand, although it was 11 miles, the guidebook said we could make it 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 hours, so maybe easy terrain. But the guidebook also said that because the route was between the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District National Parks, the trail would not be as well waymarked as other portions. We’d be going through small sheep farms and lots of stiles and gates, which sounded muddy. We were going to be taxied again, from Sedburgh to Beck Foot and then when we got to Burneside, back to Kendal for the B&B. We debated and finally decided to just skip the walk entirely and take the bus to Kendal. 

So that’s what we did. The Dalesman breakfast was nice, all served on earthenware (dinner had been served on big ceramic plates, too). There was homemade yogurt, and granola, and I didn’t get anything cooked. We chatted with another couple, who seemed to be doing day walks from various B&Bs. It wasn’t the first time we’d heard of that approach and thought maybe we could do that sometime, too.

It was raining when we got up and when we were when we were waiting for bus, but the sun came out while we were on the bus. The bus was a van with about 20 seats, and they were playing one of those Brit radio shows with a contest where someone was trying to guess the names of mostly ’80s pop songs. The contestant did better than I did. I recognized the (older) stuff they played just fine though, Bowie singing Heroes, and Ray singing Waterloo Sunset. We thought we’d have to pay for the bus but it was free, I think because were were all OAPs (old age pensioners). I think we thought we’d be taking the Western Dales bus, that charges fares, but somehow we got a freebie bus, operated by the Westmorland & Furness Community Council. Or actually I think it’s all connected. We should’ve figured out a way to make a donation, but it was too complicated making sure to get off at the right place in Kendal. Or maybe I’ll try to make a donation from home.

The sun came out while we were on the bus, and the views were pretty great. Then it mostly a beautiful day, that we spent at the laundromat and public library in Kendal. And generally wandering around Kendal. My phone step counter says we did 3.2 miles that day.

There was one sudden downpour while we were sitting in a coffee place.

While we were sitting in the coffee bar during the rain, we played around with maps and selected a dinner place. Comida [food], serving tapas, that turned out to be really good.

I drank a really nice NA or actually low alcohol IPA, 0.5%, with my tapas. Beck from Fell Brewery in Cumbria. When our waiter cleared he said we should’ve invited hm to help us finish the food. I showed him the watery trail from the day before that made us decide to skip the walk and bus to Kendal, and he said, “ahh we run on those”. 

It was straight up a steep hill to our B&B, which was easier after dinner without luggage. The Hillside was really nice, an older house with about four or five rooms. In the morning there were three groups for breakfast, two sisters, who were having a lively talk with our host because they’d all worked for a smaller regional airlines in the 1990s, and two other Americans, two women who were also walking.

That morning was our last day walking, and we decided to do another tapering of our route. It was rainy, but not pouring. The taxi was supposed to take us from Kendall to Burneside where we’d start walking, but we asked them to take us to Stavely, which is about halfway along the route, so we’d walk about 7 miles instead of 10.

The taxi detour, which added all of 10 minutes onto the trip, cost us £10, and it was totally worth it. Our B&B host was supportive, kept saying it’s your holiday, you get to do what you want. We found a good coffee place in Stavely, Duffins, and got dropped off there. The coffee was good, the bathroom was clean, and we got good advice on how to walk out of town and get on the trail. The two workers at Duffins were talking about biking and running races, so I figured they’d know the best way for us to go, and I got them to show me on my maps app.

From there it was pretty easy walking to Bowness-on-Windermere, the end of Dales Way.

Church bells were ringing as we walked down the hill to Bowness, and a woman in a group of people about our kids ages walking near us, with at least 2 babies and three dogs said they ring for them ages when there’s a wedding, so people can take pictures with the bells ringing. It wasn’t to celebrate us <grin>.

Once we got into town it was kind of culture shock. Bowness is a total tourist trap and was really crowded on a Saturday at midday. Its population is way less than Kendal, but it was more crowds because it’s so tourist-y. 

We had tea at a place called Bryson’s.

Then we went in search of our hotel, and had some of the usual problems with curved streets that plague us in England. But we got there. The Burn How Garden Inn, with each room in its own little cabin. It was spacious but the bed was not that comfortable and the bathroom was sort of detached and cold.

We got checked in and then we went for a boat ride on Lake Windermere as suggested by the guidebook. It was kind of an out and back, but kind of a fun thing to do, and sitting down.

We tried to get a reservation at the place the hotel recommended, Villa Positano, but the only thing we could do was just show up at about 5:30 and get squeezed in, so we did. It was just OK. My pasta was kind of stewed, I mean the gnocchi had some bite but the greens in the sauce were very cooked. I celebrated the end of the trail with 2 glasses of their house red, what the Brits call decent plonk.  

We were going to spend all of Sunday riding on trains to get to York so we asked for a later breakfast, which meant we had time to walk into town and get a coffee at the more hipster place that I had seen next to Bryson’s the day before but it was kind of obscured by scaffolding. The Cornish Bakery. They were the only place open at 8:00 on a Sunday. The coffee was good and the pastries looked good, but we still had breakfast coming so stuck to coffee.

Sorta too bad because the hotel breakfast started with a crowded buffet with lots of people ignoring the little sign that said, “please do not take more than you can comfortably eat”, and rudely loading plates with fruit and cereal they didn’t finish.  The wait staff included some very old-fashionedly-dressed ladies, nylons and suits that I haven’t even seen on librarians for years. Mark thought the middle-aged couple across from us, with the man holding forth interminably, had hooked up the night before, but I just thought he was a pompous ass. The tea tasted funny to me, and someone was eating kippers nearby and I could smell them, and just generally, like the uncomfortable bed and cold bathroom, was OK, but not one of our better experiences. 

Except for the painted porcelain in the ladies toilets – that was fun.

We got a taxi to the train, and in minutes, we were back to Stavely, the distance we’d spent the day before walking. And I guess I am going to have to tell you about York and our last day in London in another post – this is waaay too long already.