Tuesday 14th April 1998

Leave the village passing East Gill Force before climbing up to the ruins of Crackpot Hall. From here there is an ascent onto the moors via East Grain. Descend to the Blakethwaite Smelt Mill and follow the river to the Old Gang Smelt Mill. Continue past Surrender Bridge before emerging into Swaledale once more following a path along the valley wall eventually descending via field paths to the village of Reeth.

Route: Keld to Reeth via East Gill Force, Blakethwaite Smelt Mill, Old Gang Smelt Mill, Surrender Bridge. 

Distance: 10 Miles

Grade:.Easy, with one or two ups and down’s but no real difficulties. Mist might pose problems on the moors.

Facilities: Most available with guesthouses and pubs in the village. There are also shops and a post office. I stayed just outside Reeth in a remote cottage called Ridding Bushes. There are no facilities accessible from here but meals can be booked in advance.

Day Seven

Today was to be the shortest day of the trip and as I left the peaceful hamlet of Keld and headed for Crackpot Hall I couldn’t help feeling a little sad that I was now on the ‘downhill leg’ having passed the halfway mark. I paused to take a photo of East Gill Force before climbing up to the beautifully situated ruins of Crackpot Hall. From here the forlorn crumbling remains of the house situated on a bend in the valley looked down onto the River Swale as it wound it’s way through the hills. It was a superb viewpoint and must have been an idyllic, if remote place to live and it seemed a shame that the house had fallen into disrepair. I climbed fairly steeply to the summit of the moors via East Grain before descending once more via North Hush to the remains of the Blakethwaite Smelt Mill.  Pausing to look around the ruins in this remote, desolate spot I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the men working here in such isolation. The mill was a remnant from the old lead mining industry that once thrived in Swaledale before the industry went into decline with the introduction of foreign imports. The surrounding hills were left with a legacy of old mine buildings and a maze of deep tunnels. I continued at a leisurely pace, exploring and soaking up the melancholy atmosphere of the valley before arriving at the Old Gang Smelt Mill. (Pictured:Butt House,Keld)

Following tracks along the valley wall I reached Ridding Bushes where I had booked a room for the night in an old lead miners cottage about 1,000 ft up the from the valley floor. Reeth was far below and I would not be seeing it until the following day so I had therefore booked an evening meal with the owners of the cottage.The problem was that I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t that I was lost I simply couldn’t identify which building was the right one as there were no names or numbers to be seen. I passed a couple of cottages before pausing to consult the letter I had received from the owners. As I studied this, a walker stopped to say hello. He turned out to be a soldier and fellow Coast to Coast’er who was attempting to walk twenty five miles a day which with a full pack weighing 55 pounds he was finding a tough proposition.We chatted for a while and speculated as to which cottage might be mine. After a while the soldier carried on his way to Reeth and I was about to knock on the door of the nearest cottage when a four-wheel drive vehicle pulled up next to me. The occupants turned out to be the owners of Ridding Bushes who explained to me that they were not allowed by the National Park authorities to put signs up outside the house. This had caused problems before with guests trying to locate them and I thought it was a rather petty, bureaucratic rule which defied common sense.

Once I had been shown to my room I took a long soak in the bath and went through the now practised routine of rinsing out clothes and checking route details for the following day. At dinner, I began to wonder if the building had once been two cottages, as I appeared to have one half of the house to myself. Upstairs there was a bedroom and a bathroom for my sole use and downstairs I had a lounge/dining area to myself that included a television. After my meal, I sat watching the television until I retired to bed, as there was little to occupy me in the almost total silence high up in the valley. The owners had retreated to their quarters after dinner and apart from the occasional visit by the man to stoke the fire, I never saw them again until breakfast. It was the complete opposite to the convivial evening I had spent the previous night in Keld. I retired to bed and before turning out the light, looked out of the window into the pitch black, the only thing visible being the lights from a solitary farmhouse on the opposite valley wall. Tomorrow I would be in the bright lights of Richmond, the largest town on the whole Coast to Coast walk and a world away from my current location.