36.5 km (317.42 km) – Saturday 16th July.

No cooked breakfast for Joanne and me this morning, the B & B doesn’t start serving until 8:30; as most of their clientele must be walkers we reckon this is a cunning plan to avoid actually having to cook up a full English every day. We walked to the local village pub, where we’d had dinner last night, and picked up Dan and Graham, who alighted from a taxi from Appleby along with two fellow Pennine Wayers, Connie and Chris. The guidebook billed today as the toughest and longest day of the Pennine Way and it didn’t disappoint on either front. The day started with a long climb to the high fells and then continued over three summits, including the notorious (??) Cross Fell, which is apparently difficult to navigate, the perfect weather conditions, however, ensure that we could see easily where we were headed. From there we started a long, tedious, decent to Garrigill down the stony, aptly named, Corpse road (an old mine track). The kilometres seemed to lengthen and Garrigill was a long time coming. Dan and Graham seemed to be veering off the path towards The George and Dragon but with 8k remaining they were persuaded that it might be prudent to wait. It was a pretty, riverside walk but at the end of an arduous day was painful on the feet (well mine anyway!). After nearly 10 hours and 36 km we finally arrived at Lowbyer Country Manor. I can’t say enough about the patrons, they will definitely score a perfect ten in booking.com and I definitely recommend staying here should anyone be passing through Alston…early night (as usual) for Joanne and me…we have been walking for nearly a fortnight after all.