Over the stiles to Orton

So we backtracked by taxi shuttle to where we left off yesterday. The taxis route was through very narrow roads with high dry stone walls on either side, luckily we didn’t meet anything big coming the other way.

The walk then took us through paddocks, along beside a creek, over a very old bridge and over many stiles to Shap Abbey, not looking too shabby seeing as it dates back to 1200. Cattle and sheep in the paddocks now, so we have cow shit on our boots as well. I lost count of the number of stiles we climbed over. They’re not too keen on dogs wandering through the paddocks here.
We stopped for lunch in Shap before heading off to cross the M6 motorway, luckily there is a pedestrian bridge.

The geology changes here to limestone country, and while there were still plenty of sheep around it generally was a bit wilder than our morning walk through the paddocks. I’m not sure what the breed of sheep is now. There were some interesting rock formations.

Finally we dropped down into the village of Orton, the day seemed longer than the expected 19 kilometres, my phone registered 22, so with the late start we were too late to visit the Chocolate Shop, maybe in the morning before we leave.

For a lot of the day we could look back and see Kidsty Pike off in the distance, we’ve come a long way.Read more