Keld to Reeth: 11 miles rated as a strenuous day.

We set off from Keld Lodge in a cloud of midges – the first time we’d encountered big clouds of them.  Nice walk through the village (a few houses) and a climb on loose stone paths up past Crackpot Hall, the managers house for an old lead mine above the River Swale.  The whole day was a tour through old lead mining areas, but it’s been so long since there was any mining that the buildings are ruins and much of the landscape has recovered.

It was also the day for our first close encounter with grouse.  We’d been on grouse moor around Shap, but on these trails they got quite close, and their call sounds like they are laughing (at walkers!).

We stopped for lunch in a pleasant narrow valley with mining relics, then climbed a steep rocky trail that was an old mining ‘hush’ where water was used to expose lead ore.  At the top a narrow band that looked as barren as a moonscape was surrounded by heather moor and farmland with grazing sheep.

  Yorkshire stonemasons showing off – note the straight lines of stones across the barn even though it’s built of irregularly shaped stones.
The River Swale from up near Crackpot Hall.

  
Lunch break.

Struggling up the ‘hush’.  
 The path dropped down to Cringley Bottom, then it was on through farmland to Reeth, and an ice cream on the village green with the locals, before finding the B&B, freshening up and dinner at one of the three pubs in town.