C2C Day 8: The Butt House...

Stage 8: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

Sadly, we saw a lot of road kill, mostly rabbits, along the way. After walking 12.1 miles (19.4K), we entered the minuscule village of Keld, where we were spending the night... 

...at the Butt House. Being the mature folks that we are, we spent most of the afternoon cracking butt jokes.

When the innkeeper told us that one of the key fobs that proudly displayed the name of the inn had been stolen by some “American lads,” I said that it was probably now proudly displayed in their frat house. Then I confessed that I had briefly considering stealing the one to our room, but remembered that I’m not a thief.

C2C Day 8: The Dales...

Stage 8: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

Surprised that I actually managed to capture a shot of this young guy and his three dogs taking a cruise on a quad bike.

Here are the boys checking out a grouse butt (otherwise called a bird hide) which hunters apparently use for driven grouse shooting, a field sport in the UK.

While we didn’t see a lot of waterfalls once we left the Lakes District, it was nice to see some occasionally.

C2C Day 8: Into the Yorkshire Dales...

Stage 8: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

This stage gave us the option of taking the high road or the low road—we chose the low road across the Pennines where we came across this very strange terrain.

Soon after passing through the alien landscape, we entered our second national park: the Yorkshire Dales.

I turned around to capture this sign as we exited the county of Cumbria.

What a surprise—the Yorkshire Dales had lots of sheep!

It also had lots of rolling hills...

...and some cool ruins.

C2C Day 8: Sheep, Sheep and More Sheep...

Stage 8: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

It was cool watching dogs round up dozens of sheep. We had a nice chat with the shepherdess, whom I forgot to photograph.

Here’s the view from our lunch stop.

C2C Day 8: Nearing the Halfway Point...

Stage 8: Kirkby Stephen to Keld

After a delicious breakfast, we caught a taxi back to the spot that we had been picked up from the day before so that we didn’t miss any of the official trail, where we eventually came across this trail marker.

Parts of the trail were on paths through fields...

...while other sections were on roads, which we sometimes shared with sheep.

As always, there were great views.

C2C Day 7: More Castle Pics...

The castle was so impressive that I couldn’t resist including a few more photos. Here’s the dining room where we ate an early breakfast the next morning.

The Main Salon

The Little Schoolroom

The Little Theater

The Guest Loo

C2C Day 7: Enjoying the Castle...

It is any surprise that our favorite room of the castle was the Great British Bar?

Jimmy loved playing bartender at the honor bar, where he whipped up all kinds of creative cocktails.

It’s a good thing that we had arranged to have dinner at the castle as we were really in the middle of nowhere. We were fortunate to have the place to ourselves as the other guests must have had cars and could venture out. We liked the quaint ambiance of the bar so much that we requested to be served dinner there...

...which consisted of platters of meat for the boys and veggies for the girls.

Later, we enjoyed dessert in the main salon...

...and Carlin entertained us.