Day 19 - Osmotherley

Distance Walked: 19km, Actual Time Taken: 4h 40m, Estimated Time Taken: 5h
Ascent: 434m, Descent: 576, # Times Lost: 0
Beer: 1 pint Doom Bar

Today was easier than expected in some ways. My hosts from the B&B offered to drive me back to the car park so I could skip the 1/2 mile into the village.  I happily accepted, expecting them to drive me to the car park at the foot of  the escarpment where I'd turned off the GPS yesterday.  However, they drove
me to the car park at the top!  I didn't complain as it was raining.  Fortunately not heavily but it did drizzle on and off all day.  The day invovled mostly walking along the edge of the escarpment with views  down into the valley below on one side and across the expanse of moor on the other.  The day before I could see for miles.  Today all I saw was cloud. So no photos of the walk today as everything was well wrapped in plastic - at least two layers.  Given it didn't rain heavily nothing got too wet, just a little damp.  

I got to Osmotherley around 2:30pm but fortunately I was able to check into my hotel for the night, the Queen Catherine pub, and even better my suitcase had arrived.  There was a big pile of luggage in the foyer.  It turns out that two groups of hikers doing the Coast to Coast walk are in town tonight.  That walk and the Cleveland Way overlap of the next 10 miles or so.

I wandered downstairs about 6pm to have a beer and some dinner.  I was very hungry as I hadn't had any lunch - I forgot to order any from my B&B (they wanted 24 hours notice) and it was too cold and wet to have stopped to eat anyway.  I was soon joined by Garfield, the pub cat, but he lost interest in me when I refused to share any of my steak & ale pie.

Not long after the fun started.  A pair of women came downstairs to complain they had no power in their room.  After investigation it turned out that most of the village has lost power.  For some reason the lights were still on downstairs in this pub but other buildings were entirely without power. The kitchen had lights and gas ovens so they could do some food. Fortunately, my Harmless pie & chips had already been cooked before the power  went out but I had to settle for a rather Dull cheesecake for dessert.  Still we got to dine by candlelight.

The pair of women who first alerted us to the power custs have settled in at the table next to me.  They are part of one of the groups doing the Coast to Coast. They have a 20 mile day tomorrow.  That is crazy.  Even over not too hilly terrain that is still a 10 hour day, and that's without any breaks.

`