Coast 2 Coast 2 Coast: Day 5, Day 3 of the run, Outhouses, Nine Standards Rigg, Derek and Bog.

Day 5 started of nicely with a few breakfast rain showers and nice rainbows.

Dad caught me setting off slowly:

It took a while to get going, a climb immediately up and over the M6. It was then heading round Orton Dale where the sun had come up, and there was a view of the Pennines:

looking back at where I had come from:

And a sweaty me!

There was some reasonable running, mainly contouring with a few ups and downs, quite pleasant. However I soon had an urgent desire to lighten the load! I found a derelict cottage and in the backyard found the remains of an out house. Using an old steel gutter I fashioned a seat over the remaining stone upright, quite refreshing to be open air! I was then further distracted by a nice viaduct in Smardale.

Onwards and Nine Standards Rigg came into view up in the distance, followed by the odd roof top for Kirkby Stephen in the foreground and a lunch stop with a weary arrival.

A long climb post lunch passed a quarry and into the peat that characterises the Nine Standards area, by this stage the Ipod nano had given up the ghost completely, it was just me and mud up to the Nine Standards.

Further along at the view point I met two ramblers who mentioned they'd seen an elderly gent heading off down the hill. I jokingly said I'd look out for him and carried on to the sign where the two routes off the top diverged, the scene resembled someting from the Somme circa 1916, not pleasant, I've never seen so much. The route away from this point was more of a peat bog covered with squelching foot swallowing mud, often hidden under thin layers of spagnum. There were posts to direct you every few hundred meters, but this was no path! It was even worse when a stream tried to cross this mess. I was wet and filthy by this point!

In the distance I could see a solitary dark figure, it was hard to tell if it was moving at all. With my new found bog hopping skills I was soon upon this mystery soul, and cheerfully asked how he was doing. The reply was not good, an old frail man appeared from under a hood, hands covered in filth, he had just spent the last twenty minutes extracting both feet from a bog, and it was clear he was very shakey, having troubles doing anything. After a couple of minutes it was clear he was not in a good way. I asked if he wanted some company for a bit, which he gratefully accepted. He slowly got moving, but his energy levels were low, he kept getting lightly stuck, struggled with the steep stream bed sides and was falling over alarmingly frequently. It was clear I would have to stay with him until off the bog.

Over the next four hours I learnt a number of things, firstly 83 year olds may not be ideally to wet cold boggy fells, even if they had been to the Himalayas, Alps and Scottish Highlands in their younger days. Secondly I found out that Derek reckoned this was his scariest mishap whilst out in the hills. We got down to meet the stream at a slow pace, and no real improvement in derek, it was clear he was utterly exhausted, even the remains of his tea and a mars bar did little to perk him up. I tried to pick out the driest line out along the valley, but there wasn't a lot to go at. I tried to keep Derek chatting and found out he'd worked out on all sorts of interesting aircraft as a structural aeronautical engineer. However this didn't speed him up either. There were numerous falls, trips and stumbles, we were averaging an amazing 1.3 miles per hour! About 3 1/2 hours after finding Derek we got to Ravenseat farm where I left him in the capable hands of the farm wife.

It was now just before 7pm so I put the hammer down to get on to keld where I was heading, there was no mobile reception, and I knew dad would be getting a little anxious by now. I hit the road, and came round the corner to find dad out on a mini search! After a bit of jogging along side me I got away from him and beat him the last few hundred metres to the rather quaint little campsite!