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| for small walkers only |
The title's a little dramatic, but every journey has some dark sides and today was my day. It started with the guide guy describing this as his least favorite day for numerous reasons - long, highway crossings, least engaging landscapes, no services, seriously,
NO tea for 16 miles! Which for me is 6.5 walking hours and bloody long to wait for tea, which luckily was offered within seconds of arriving at the B&B.
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| stinging nettle guarded gate |
But in the meantime there were hurdles, obstacles, challenges, and grief to encounter. This heretofore Hobbit like adventure in the shire took on a darker more menacing Lord of the Ring feel as the minders of gates and stiles seemed to relish creating impossible latches and locks such that I just took to climbing over gates rather than unfastening and fastening.
Direction signs became obscure and I landed in a small pasture with a ram and had to scramble over dry stone wall with barbed wire topping under duress without toppling the wall.
Ubiquitous stinging nettles maliciously grow at stiles particularly at tricky latches where you have to reach around blindly and get bitten before you can see anything and are forced to walk through them in small spaces. Thistles grow where you need a hand hold.
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| endless green fells (hills) |
Then military low flying jets that appeared out of nowhere on training missions far from population centers brought a Star Wars sensibility with crashing literary metaphors abounding. Even the book I was listening to became extra dark and disturbing. I arrived cold, wet, tired, bedraggled.
So my gratitude list is short: I made it, I survived, I didn't hail a bus or taxi - though I have nothing against anyone who does such a thing if they can find them.
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