John O'Groats to Land's End - Day 026 - Horsley to Bellingham

Day: 026

Date: Sunday, 26 June 2022

Start:  Horsley

Finish:  Bellingham

Daily Kilometres:  22

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  761

Weather:  Overcast all day with a strong, blustery and chilly wind.

Accommodation:  Guest House

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Cooked breakfasts

  Lunch:  Ham & cheese sandwich/Chicken pasta salad

  Dinner:  Bolognese pasta bake, chocolate trifle

Aches:  None really

Highlight:  It was nice to have a short day

Lowlight:  The strong blustery wind took the edge off what would otherwise have been a lovely walk.  On the open moors atop the hills it was strong enough to blow you sideways at times and was a constant roar in your ears.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

With breakfast not until 8:30am, Julie had time to go out for a run on a beautiful morning before we ate.  We began walking around 9:30am on what was quickly becoming a cloudy and breezy morning.  To get from our hotel back to the Pennine Way involved a couple of hours of roadwalking, not our favourite activity, with a brief cross-farm leg on a public footpath to break it up.

Once we got away from the main road, things became very quiet, apart from the wind, as we climbed up a long gradual hill through sheep grazing country to a ridge and the Pennine Way.  Although the cloud base was low, it was clear and we could see a long way in every direction from the moorland atop the ridge as we walked southwards.  There were some boggy sections, and others overgrown by heath, but mostly the walking was easy and very pleasant.

We met a few hikers going the other way, but mostly had the world to ourselves.  With only about 20 kilometres to walk for the day, our plan had been to break it into two legs, but Julie showed no signs of wanting to stop in the chilly wind and we just kept going all the way to the village of Bellingham, which we reached around 2:20pm.

We bought some lunch in the village store, which we ate on a bench opposite, along with supplies for tonight and tomorrow since our accommodation was about 1.5 kilometres out of town and we didn’t want to have to come back in.  By 3:30pm, we had reached our accommodation and checked in, glad for an early stop, and pleased that the looming rain had mostly held off.  Unexpectedly, they had a washing machine (but no dryer) so we washed the smelliest stuff and hung it around our room to dry.