Two's company

Hooray. Mick's back in business. We leave the gates of our palatial hostel on the first walk of the trip we can start without a car. 
The purple moor is teeming with grouse and as we walk down the road from the hostel, which as it happens is a former shooting lodge, there's a shooting party assembled, all wearing the classic uniform of quilted Barbour jackets, plus fours, thick woollen socks and brogues.

We have a hot start to the sound of gunfire. 'Lovely day for it,' I call out to a Barbour-jacketed chap standing by his Range Rover.
The track follows the Swale, past Marrick Priory, which has been transformed into an outdoor education centre, a bit of abbey-seiling on offer, perhaps. Groan.
Just after elevenses – a morning ritual I'm insisting on, though Mick I'm sure would happily press on without coffee and a shortbread finger – we spot this little slice of country comedy, a farmer chasing sheep on his quad bike with a little pup seemingly in training for the big time.

On a walk with Mick, I'm invariably bringing up the rear, stopping to look at a view (or covertly take a breather). 'Oh wow, look at the topiary in that garden,' I shout, but all I can see are Mick's walking-booted heels disappearing round the corner.
I nicknamed him The Treadmill because of the way he becomes so completely focussed on walking that he's often oblivious to anything going on around him. It's an admirable quality and we know that when it comes to projects such as the family tree, he single-mindedly pursues every challenge the ancestors throw at him, but we wouldn't have him any other way, would we? Today, though, he notices this very cool bridge.

He also remembers how I feel about dogs and becomes my protector from a very jumpy pup who bounds towards us out of a travellers' trailer park. And he's the one who can't get enough of the lush green grass in the fields behind me here.

I'm enjoying so much being here to hear my uncles' thoughts and reminiscences, the things that stir memories. We walked on concrete the other day, for example, and Paddy remembered the roads the monks had built on Caldey, with the Abbot in charge of the heavy machinery and lowly Pad on mixing duty. Sharing all this is a real treat for me.
Back to today, we lunch in the shade of an old tree whose roots accommodate us in an armchair style embrace. Further on, towards Richmond, our final destination, we munch on exquisite early blackberries.

I ask a woman to take our picture with Richmond in the background and she says, see those mountains in the distance? You'll be climbing those. She should know, she's walking the Coast to Coast from east to west and has just come over them.
Down in Richmond's cobbled market square, Mick buys us two enormous ice creams.