The breakfast at the Youth Hostel was the first breakfast were we had had the option for it to be served early. Which was quite a disappointment really as today was very much a rest day it seemed a real shame to have to be up for an early breakfast but they did let us bum about using their internet while they did the cleaning which was awesome.

In the end we went back into Alston to have lunch and to send some more things home. We managed to unload another three kilograms so I find it quite hard to believe that my father is still carrying anything on his back. (Un)fortunately the ‘tea room’ was full so we had to try a different cafe opposite the town hall and I am glad that we did. The flapjack was awesome and the Red Leicester really worked well in the Panini. Arriving back at the youth hostel the it seemed like we were perhaps taking too much advantage of our hosts and so we left for the short walk to Garrigill.

Yesterday I bought a couple of ski poles at the outdoor shop and I was keen to see if they helped or hindered the process. When younger I always walked with a stick but it seems that the fashion is now to walk with two. I must say that I was skeptical at first and I already appear to have broken them as I can’t apply sufficient force to unscrew and thus collapse them but they allowed me to get sufficient start on my father to take some pictures even on our incredibly short journey today.

I had expected that we should arrive within two hours of leaving and so there was no excuse for sitting down and using some of the beautifully carved benches. Even if we had wanted to  we didn’t have a packed lunch to eat (it didn’t seem necessary).

The rest of the day was spent catching up on blog posts from the locations where there had been insufficient wi-fi to upload the photographs from my phone and publish them to the web. In all honesty I don’t know where the time goes to at night I had hoped to really take this opportunity to get my body into a ‘proper’ sleep regime as when I see something like this my first thought is that the apocalypse has come and that we are being surrounded by shoats.

When we arrived in the village we were not expecting the Old Post Office B&B to the location of a shop which looks like it is still a post office. Our host seems very nice but due to some sort of issue with the use of Aga we had to go the George and Dragon for dinner. I can’t believe how lively this pub is considering how rural the area is. However, it is Saturday.

Getting access to the internet is often half the battle and I ended up buying three separate sets of internet from BTFON before I was finally able to connect. Of course this is the price you pay for being in an area of sufficiently low density to allow open fires like this beauty.