Officially this was supposed to be a short day but with us already behind it was going to have to be a pretty long day to get the miles pushed out. We got out on the road at a reasonable time after breakfast and were on the road about 9am.
I was with John from the start this time as we had some navigation and climb to do early in the days distance. We had to climb all the way up through Keld and around the steep and technical section at Gunnerside Gill which was absolutely stunning and a valley I really enjoyed walking around. It has some tough technical terrain and more than a few nice dodgy drop offs but we ploughed on steadily through the day. The weather again was amazing, the warmest day so far and I even got slightly burnt.
We bumped into a few groups of walkers and a couple of DofE groups. Funny thing is the DofE groups were from a 6th form college in Essex near me. Even funnier than that was that one of the kids had on a Challenge Running Buff which John noticed. Speaking to the girl it turns out her mum has run many of my events and I knew her. Small world!
As we finally got all the way to the quarry works at the top we spotted a couple of the DofE supervisors waiting to check in on the kids. I recognised one of them as Andy Brown a ex colleague from the Fire Service, we had a quick hug and chat and then me and John cracked on. It was a long but smooth descent back down into the valley where Maxine met us and John changed shoes back into trainers and he could run the next section as it was smooth and fairly flat from here for a bit.
I had a lovely drink from a Beck on the way down here. The water was lovely and cold.
Maxine needed a break from driving and as the next section was good enough for John to get a wiggle on it was the best to get the miles in and still look after Maxine.
John ran on for a good few miles at a run/walk and covered a good few miles making up a big portion of the deficit and only leaving about 6 miles owed from scheduled mileage. He stopped running at Marrick.
John was pretty tired now after that effort and we drove ahead to the next hotel which was a lovely quiet pub called the Bluebell inn. John was really feeling the accumulated miles now in his legs but he is a strong determined man and after another plate of fish and chips(his staple diet each night) and his usual bottle of Merlot we retired pretty early.
We had made up a good amount of miles but it would start to get hilly and hard again as we started to head towards the North York Moors and harder terrain again.
Onto day 7……..
