Day 1 ...

Wharram Percy to Wintringham

Sunday, 5th August 2012

Mum spent hours on Saturday night mentally running checklists of everything we might need for yesterday and packing our rucksacks, whilst I got lots of sleep and Mum got very little! She made sure the camera and both our phones were fully charged, that our raincoats and a picnic blanket were packed, along with a first aid kit and a compass. She put the walking poles and maps ready next to the rucksacks so that we wouldn't go without them. Then she prepared what food she could before she laid our clothes out ready to wear this morning (including her white RNLI t-shirt and my navy blue one, given to us by the RNLI because we are raising money for them). She also made sure that we had spare clothes in a spare rucksack to leave with Uncle Mick in his car, in case the weather forecast turned out to be right and we got a soaking....luckily we didn't!.

Uncle Mick isn't really my uncle but is more like a great-uncle, since he was my Grandad's best friend since the 1960's. Mum thinks of him as her Godfather since she doesn't know who her Godfather is. He would have made her a good Godfather as my "Uncle" Andrew does for me. He is so caring and generous. Uncle Mick drove us to Wharram Percy today and then met us at Wintringham to bring us back, even though he turns 70 on Saturday.

Mum got me up at 8am and I had my breakfast (2 oatibix, banana & glass of water) in my PJs for once ... Mum didn't want me getting mucky before we left! She still made me do my morning chores though of sweeping the bathroom floor, topping up the cat's water dish and putting out the rubbish that I should have put out last night but forgot to! Whilst I did that, she finished making up our lunches, filling water bottles and packing them and the snacks. I got dressed 10 minutes before we left and the last thing we did as we left at 9.30am was take the flowers for Grandad from the fridge.

Grandad's friend Mel was joining us for the walk and she was waiting for us as we left to go to meet Uncle Mick at his house (5 mins walk from ours). Once we had unloaded the car at Wharram Percy car park, it was spot on 11am. Mum took at photo of me as we left the carpark and another as we set off walking. She thinks I look really small in them.

We were leaving the first of 3 lots of flowers for Grandad at the first gate on the route heading towards the medieval village. It's where I left some the day after he passed away when I went up there with my great-aunt whilst Mum was in hospital. When we got to the last gate that takes you to the medieval village, Mum said we needed to go right and I said we needed to go left (towards the village), so we went left ....
but Mum was right we should have gone right. We didn't mind though really that we added a little extra to the route because it was nice to see where the village had been and the ruined St Martin's church next to it. 

We thought, at one point, that we would need to walk through a herd of cows (including a bull) but luckily we didn't! We soon gave up on the idea that the polypocket for the maps would work. Every time I moved, they fell out and even just carrying them in a hand didn't work that well, since it was easy to forget which way up the pocket needed to be. Mum ended up carrying them because she was better at reading the maps anyway. We left Uncle Mick having a look around the church and headed back to the gate to continue the planned part of the walk. The path was very very wet and muddy and it was very tricky for a while to get down the track.

At the end of the track, was a very steep narrow road that had a lot of vans going up and down it very fast and we had to hug the edge of the verge several times to let them passed.The road eventually came out in the village of Wharram Le Street and the end of our first map. We thought we would possibly stop for lunch at the end of map 2.... 

(at Wharram Le Street, pointing the way to Settrington Wood)

About a mile along the next track, I gave Mum a shock and actually took off my jumper! She and Mel had been walking in t-shirts since we left the car park. At the end of that track we came to The Peak .... a small valley that we needed to cross to reach Wood House Farm and Settrington Wood. It was very steep going down and hard work getting back up again, because the grass was very wet and boggy.

Just before The Peak 

The farm had a lot of sheep ... very noisy sheep ... and just passed the farm as we walked towards the wood, we saw a toad sat on the edge of the path. Throughout the day, we saw lots of butterflies & bees and heard lots of chirping crickets or grasshoppers in the grass.

When we reached the edge of Settrington Woods, it was 2pm and time for lunch. Mum laid out the picnic blanket on a grassy bit next to a Wolds Way sign post and dished out the food. We watched a huge black cloud head towards us whilst we ate. We really thought we'd soon need our raincoats when we set off at 2.30pm to start on map 3 ...

(looking towards our next destination...the Brow!)

About 15 minutes later, just as Mum took a photo of the Wardale valley with the mist rolling in across it, the rain started  ... but we all decided not to use our raincoats since we were warm and found the rain cooling. A few minutes later Mum's mobile phone went off and we guessed it was Uncle Mick checking to see how we were doing.To save it getting wet, she decided to let the call go to voicemail and leave it in her rucksack until we got to the tree cover next to Settrington triangulation point, which was only another 5 minutes away and where we next intended to stop to lay our second lot of flowers for Grandad. By the time we got there the rain had stopped. 

Wardale as the mist rolled in

On the day Grandad died, he was due to meet his friend Harry in the afternoon. Harry didn't know when he was walking to the meeting point, whether Grandad was in front of him or behind him, so he scratched a message into the front of the triangulation point. That way if Grandad was coming up behind him, he'd know Harry was ahead of him. Grandad never saw the message, but on the day we scattered his ashes, we came across it. We knew Harry had left a message because he told mum, but he never said where it was, what the message said or even how he had written the message. As soon as we saw "Hi Pete from Harry" scratched into the stone, we knew straight away who it was to! We hoped the message was still there today but it had mostly worn away. You could just see the Hi and the P though. 

After we laid the flowers at the triangulation point, Mum checked the voicemail from Uncle Mick. He was asking how we were getting on and said that he had found the pick up point so he would see us later. As Mum still just had a signal, she phoned him back and left him a voicemail saying we were a few minutes from the brow so she estimated we'd get to 
St Peter's church between 4pm and 4.30pm. 

A few minutes later we arrived at the brow and the end of map 3. Mum made me climb over the stile for a photo, then she and Mel cheated and went through the gate! 

We laid the rest of our flowers, next to the bench that someone had placed for one of their loved ones and close to where we had scattered Dad's ashes on 16 October 2011.
(3 days after what would have been his 70th birthday and exactly one month after his funeral). A pretty snail appeared on the top of the flowers, so we are assuming it fell off the underside of the arm on the bench. The view from the brow is very pretty especially in the lovely sunshine we were having. 

From the seat at the brow we could see, the final destination that map 4 would take us to ... Wintringham!

We followed the slope of the brow as we descended to the valley floor, before reaching another stile & gate that took you into a track between fields. I went over the stile and Mum went to follow me, until Mel said she was going through the gate. Mum decided to follow her instead and as she took the gate off Mel to go through it, her feet just slid and the bar from the gate hit her in the side of the mouth as she fell backwards, causing her broken tooth to slice into her cheek and making it bleed inside. Her mouth started to swell straight away, so she had to put the barely cold ice pack from lunch onto it for a few minutes. She said it was Grandad playing a prank on her because she was doing too well, since he liked to have a joke at her expense whenever he could. 

At the end of the track, we had to cut through a wheat field and we laughed about how we'd been in a field of cows, sheep and now wheat. I suggested next we'd go through a field of pigs. Mum & Mel made ewww noises and said no thank you. The field of wheat led to the outskirts of Wintringham, where we found a small stream with a ford that the local kids were paddling in and their Millennium Pond & Nature Reserve just after that.

The rest of the route didn't take us through the village but around the back of it and along what felt like a very very long track, but was actually quite short compared to some today. Just after we got onto it, Mum spotted a pig pen and we had to laugh after my comment earlier. It had 2 tiny piglets in the shelter and a couple of adults in a huge muddy mess in the middle!

We had seen St Peter's church in the distance but Mel kept saying that it wasn't getting any closer. We were all getting very tired now that we knew the end was near I think...either that or Grandad was playing another prank and was moving "his church" to make us walk further! 

(these photos are in the right order, taken a minute apart & you can see the church got further away!)

Eventually, it did get nearer and as we reached it, Mum spotted a bench in the graveyard next door. She said she didn't care that it was in the graveyard, she just wanted to sit down, so we made our way to Roy & Rose Wilson's memorial seat and had a drink, whilst Mum sent a text to Uncle Mick saying "we are in the graveyard". That made me laugh!

It was 4.05pm! 5hrs and 5 mins since we had left Wharram Percy car park and almost exactly the time Mum had said we would be there, as we were putting on our rucksacks at the car!

Uncle Mick arrived about 15 mins later and said he'd found a nice place nearby called Wolds Way Lavender, where he'd had some lunch of fish & chips. He suggested we stop there for a comfort break before heading home. Mum offered to treat us all to tea and cake. Uncle Mick said he'd pay but Mum insisted since he'd done the driving and had sponsored me too. It was a really nice place. Mum got herself a lavender candle with a pretty shade .... she does love her candles and really didn't need a new one but it is pretty and will take a tealight once the candle is used up, so she will be able to reuse it!
Uncle Mick got a Wolds Way Lavender teaspoon for his collection and Mel got a keyring. What did I get? I got a free Thornton's triple chocolate icecream!! The lady behind the counter had asked Mum what we'd been doing for the day and she told her all about my walk and why I am doing it, so the lady said I deserved a reward of an icecream and let me choose whichever one I wanted. Mum knew I'd get a chocolate one and Uncle Mick said he knew I enjoyed it because I had it all around my mouth! (9miles completed)

When we got out the car once we were home again, we were really stiff and tired. Mum & I just had more sandwiches, salad, fruit & the unfinished snacks that we had taken with us for tea, because we were both too tired to wait for something to cook. I went to bed when I'd finished eating and Mum said she wasn't moving til morning and would sleep on the settee rather than try to climb the stairs because her hips ached.

Today, we have written the blog and watched the showjumping in the Olympics at Horseguard's Parade. It was very exciting and Team GB won their first gold medal for showjumping in over 50 years!