Day 12 Dufton to Alston

 Today was without doubt the hardest day of our walk so far I don’t think any of us quite expected it to be so tough but we’re going well and in good spirits. We start on the edge of Dufton

We follow path between fields on the village south Eastern edge from coatsyke farm with fields of cows

track leads to an old ruin and the final gate into the countryside is gentle to begin with but once beyond the ladder style over the final access wall the gradient increased  significantly. We then cross a huge dry river on a bridge

🌉 

the next couple of miles up to Knock Fell account for 1500 feet ascent

and we often took the chance to look across the Lake District and catch our breath   knock fell summit is rather uninspiring

But we did pass this impressive cairn on knock fell

This is followed with two more ascents in a couple of miles. We climb upto Great Dun Fell and its Radar station 

We climb to Little Dun Fell

  We now have a final climb to Cross fell the highest point of our whole walk and it’s impressive Shelter on the summit

and standing on the summit of Crossfell we see across the whole Pennines with the Grandvista in front of us. A short boggy descent takes is back to track that leads down to Garrigill

V

We feel relief on reaching the firm footing of corpse Road , (so called  because in the past it was the route coffins had to be taken to reach concentrated ground as there was nowhere in Carrigill). Navigation was very easy but as the miles into Carigill begin to hammer the soul of our feet and our knees begin to crack and grown under the constant descent.

It becomes mind over matter to keep going. A brief respite was found in Greg where we had lunch out the wind and we left a note in the visitors book

Gregs hut is a welcome and well-maintained bothy just over the summit of Cross Fell where walkers can take refuge from the elements was originally used. They could stay here all week and walk home at the weekend. The descent continues and the sight of the road stretching head is sole destroying

but eventually Garrigill comes into site and the worst is over we tested our tired feet at a bench near the end of the track

we pushed on to Alston the final few miles along the river. It may be easier than the coffin road but it’s no picnic. It’s an obstacle course of stiles and sprung gates

quite frankly those last few miles seem to go on forever We came to a bridge we needed to cross that was apparently unsafe and closed but it looked fine to us and we didn’t want a detour so crossed

We then had a small climb that felt far worse than it was 

The last few fields were pretty and we eventually arrived Alston.

 

We had clocked up just over 21 miles and just over 4000 feet of ascent 

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