Day 42 Saturday - Lazonby to Cotehill

Walking 9.30am to 4.30pm
Distance walked today 10 miles
Total distance walked 604 miles
Distance left 448 miles

Yesterday's posting was done at The Joiner's Arms last night, helped by an excellent pint of Helvellyn Gold from the Hesket Newmarket brewery.

Lazonby has an excellent Co-op with everything that a hiker needs (and more). Opening hours are 7.30am-8.00pm.

Today started off a bit rainy. I walked along the road to the next village, Kirkoswald. Not a very big place but it supports three pubs. The village shop/PO has recently closed.

Kirkoswald

I then took a path across fields to Staffield, then the lane to just past Beck Farm where I followed a track through Coombe Wood, belonging to the Forestry Commission. This was really nice and there were views down a steeply wooded slope to the River Eden.

This photo was me experimenting with a useful little gadget, a Stickpic. This enables me to take photos of myself if there's no-one else around to do it and there's nowhere to balance a camera and take a timed photo. It attaches to the end of a walking pole. A bit of experimenting is required to get it right!

Emerging from the wood, I crossed the Eden, a wide river at this point, over the quite old road bridge into Armathwaite.

There were a couple of pubs here but they didn't detain me. The village shop may or may not still be functioning - it was closed today, although it was lunchtime.

Knowing that today's walking was going to be quite short, I took the road north-west out of Armathwaite to the Forestry Commission's High Stand Plantation, thinking that I might find somewhere reasonable to spend the night. I collected water from the nearby Caravan Club site at Englethwaite Hall and am pitched in woodland overlooking a small lake. Not that discreet but the only passers by are people staying at the CC site (apart from a couple of young lads who threw a pine cone at the tarp but a shout sent them on their way). This is my first proper wildcamp of the trip and it's pretty perfect (apart from a few midges).