Day 8 - Orton to Keld via Kirby Stephen

What a difference a day makes!  The day started with beautiful sunshine, and stayed wonderful all day.

Due to the fact that we were unable to walk yesterday, we had to start making up the distance.  We should have reached Kirby Stephen yesterday and moved on to Keld today, but had to see how far towards Keld we could get.  We had about 25 miles to cover at the start of the day to get us back on track, but as you can see, we were happy and feeling very positive.

 We had decided to do as much road work as possible today, as the ground is so saturated after the downpours over the last couple of days.  Where ever we went today, what were previously trickling brooks, became a raging torrents.  Mother Nature in full force can be very frightening!

 There were clouds in the distance threatening rain most of the day, but the sunshine followed us for most of it.

 We decided to cut along a dismantled train track and came across these lime kilns, commonly known as the Smardale Lime Kilns.

 Further along the track, we came to the Smardale Gill Viaduct which was built in the 1860's and the views were absolutely amazing.

 Looking back from where we had come from the Smardale Gill Viaduct.

We finally had to cut across various footpaths to take us towards the Keld road, and looking back at our course today, was amazing.  As we came out of Nateby and headed up the Keld road, some bloke hung over the scaffolding on the side of a house and shouted, "ere, weren't you at Patterdale on Sunday, walking?" Talk about a small world!

We made it to within 8 miles of Keld Lodge which is the hotel we are booked into for the next 2 nights.  

Sherpa Maj picked us up and drove us the last 8 miles, but will return us to our pick up point tomorrow morning after breakfast so that we can continue our walk.  Our aim tomorrow is to get to Reeth, but that means we are looking at about 19 miles.  As long as the muscles are recovered, we will endeavour to do it.