Sunday April 9 – 32.6 km (275.1km)
We made an early start today, with a long, hot day forecast. Osmotherly is a lovely little village with three coffee shops and two hotels so a good spot to revisit. The Golden Lion was great, last night’s dinner was more restaurant than pub and our room was perfect. Today we followed ‘The Cleveland Way’ for much of the day. We climbed out of Osmotherly and quite quickly were rewarded with lovely views of the heather moors of the onward route. After around 13km we descended to a road to find Lords Stones Café; you wait 10 days for a wee cup of coffee enroute and then you find yourself in an unexpected, welcome and very up market cafe/delicatessen ( all sorts of fancy vinegars, oils, etc…luckily no space or will to carry any more stuff!). After a welcome stop for coffee and cakes we continued. The next section of the walk was my kind of day; perfect weather plus big climbs and big descents followed by more climbs and descents…this continued until I decided it was time for lunch, at 21km. The rest of the day was over the moors on a good track which could have been unforgiving in inclement conditions but today was perfect. Finally after 32.6km we arrived at the Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge. I was expecting a tiny wee miserable inn in the middle of nowhere but it couldn’t have been more different. It was bursting at the seams with day trippers, out to catch the sun and who were all dining in the Lion Inn…we squeezed in with our rucksacks, made our way to the bar and quickly were collapsing in our room. We’ve just had dinner, now to watch Line of Duty before continuing tomorrow…only two days to go.

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