Day 9: Sun 23rd: Keld Lodge to Grinton Lodge

We stayed last night at Keld Lodge. We had bed and breakfast for £90, which was great value. We also had dinner here. I had Fish Pie it was excellent. This was our view from the dining room as we dinned 

You can see the path we are leaving on tomorrow if you zoom in on the right-hand side. 

The proprietor of Keld Lodge was Dave, a very dry-witted character with a retort for everything. He was very much the captain of the ship. 

The weather forecast was correct except the cloud was low cloud and we could not see the hill in the photo above when we sat down to breakfast at 7.30. However, it had started to lift so instead of leaving at 8.00 we delayed leaving till 9.00. 

That’s the Keld Lodge between us in the background

From the start, the walk was very beautiful with large valleys and  rivers.

River Swale

View back into Keld 

We then proceed to climb up on to Black Hill alongside deep gorges. The temperature was cold so we still had our coats on. The scenery was constantly changing.

We then did a step decent into a gorge and walked around the Blakethwaite Smelt Mine which was an old led mine. It was at the junction of two gorges. Difficult to capture on photos so I did a few videos. The videos shows us entering and leaving the path and  at the end is the exit and the bank is our assent up on to the edge of Great Pinseat. 

The next set of photos show the ascent and traverse along Great Please and descending in to meet Barney Beck

Which then flows into the River Swale which we left just after Keld. 

Ahead is home for the night. Reeth you can see on the left just above the wall. Grinton is abou Km further down the valley and Grinton Lodge is 1km to the right up a big hill.

We decided   to stop for food and drink in Reeth but as it was 14.05 we had missed food at the Black Bull by 5 mins. We had to settle for two pints, crisps and nuts. They did suggest the Dales Bike Centre for food as it is one all day which was in Grinton. We headed there and had fab food. 

Then we crossed the River Swale again.

Then it was a 1km hike up a steep hill to the Grinton Lodge. It’s the old lodge of a shooting estate.

We got to stay in the base of the tower. First thing was to get some washing done as there had been nowhere to do it since Patterdale, except socks of course!

Today: 20 km
Total: 191.61 km

Tomorrow we are off to Richmond which is a short 17km. Weather looks ok tomorrow with a brief increase in the chance of rain in the late afternoon.

So the following video is of everything I took today, no text or audio commentary except in one or two videos. I know it won’t win any awards. It’s 7 secs long!

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