Mud brothers... again

Assembling at Danby Wiske we've got Hauke again for this section. We bumped into him outside the church at Bolton-on-Swale yesterday picking up the car and his face, when he recognised us, was a picture of surprise. 
It's another flat one so all three of us are present and correct, though Paddy is dreaming of his next rest day, and scoping out local priories to visit while Mick and I are trudging the hills. He's really got the abbey habit.

It's a muddy one today, the kind of mud that builds up under your boots until you're a foot taller, slithering around on earth-laden platform soles.

Almost as symbolic, for me, as crossing the M6 or A1, is this crossing of the East Coast train line, a journey I've made hundreds of times since I moved to London almost 30 years ago. We just missed a train, though.

We have elevenses round the back of a farm, though we don't need to buy their juice or flapjacks as we have our own mid-morning refreshments, in the shape of coffee and Tunnocks.

We meet David and Jo, a young couple doing the Coast to Coast in two weeks, camping mainly. I take advantage of the stop to put a plaster on my toe. My boot has been rubbing and I want to avoid it developing into a full-blown blister. Immediately I'm offered all kinds of plasters. It's the one thing people on this journey have plenty of. 

There's marginally more of interest on this third of the very boring sections and we go through a farm where the owners clearly have a great sense of humour. A plastic rat is nailed to the top of the style in the farmyard, and this skull graces one of the fenceposts.

We have to cross a railway line on foot, thankfully it's not as busy as the East Coast line. I even offered to pose for a photo lying across the tracks, but thought better of it once I was down there. I'd quite like to hang onto my feet, just until Robin Hood's Bay, anyway.

There's also the busy A19 to cross, with me screaming at Mick, as he's standing right in the middle of a slip road with a car coming straight towards him at 60mph. So the mad men crossed first and this is my view from the central reservation.
We finish very early, before two, so drive over to Mount Grace Priory, a 13th century Carthusian monastery that boasts a reconstruction of a monk's cell. Pad's quite envious when he sees the space and luxury these monks enjoyed, from plumbed-in loos to their own herb gardens.
Later Hauke joins us for a dinner fit for kings – if not Carthusian monks, who had their vittals pushed through holes in the wall – at the Golden Lion.