Day seven
Kirkby Stephen to keld
11 miles
Depart 1030
Arrive 1630

As I had to be up for my breakfast by 7, I set my alarm for the first tine this holiday but in then end didn't need at as no curtains in the room meant I was awake at first light. Despite a general poor performance at the hostel, Breakfast was surprisingly good. Although she did leave the moment it was served and we ended up doing the washing up, wiping down the tables and putting away all the breakfast things ourselves and were left thinking £6 was a little steep for the amount of work we did ourselves.

The drying room was also useless and so fir the first time this holiday both sets of my walking socks were wet which meant having to put on wet smelly socks which was a little unpleasant.

My diet over the past few days has not been bad but possibly lacking in all food groups and that morning I had an Overwhelming need for fruit, so a quick pop down the co-op to load up on fruit pots and a large amount of raspberries.

Once Steve and Eloise were all packed and i had consumed my body weight in fruit we were ready for the off. A quick bit of weaving through the back streets of town and we were into some countryside. 15 mins in though Steve started patting his chest and had that I've lost something face on that I frequently display myself. He had left his map case back at the hostel. Doh.

He dropped kit and set off at high speed to return about 20 mins later a bit red faced and shouting 'I got it'

So off we set again in what was rapidly deteriorating weather For our first day on the moors. There were again a number of choices but the main one was wether or not to head for the 9 standards. These were a collection of impressive 18th century cairns whose reason for being was unknown. There are a lot of theories, my favourite of which, is that they were built by bored youths of the day with nothing better to do. Graffiti of old.

Heading upto the standards was a little heavy going onto the wind and rain with a little hail thrown in for good measure. The views were spectacularly desolate and the little pimples that were the 9 standards in the distance finally came into sight.

Impressive as they were though we were more impressed with there wind sheltering ability as we cowered behind the biggest one to get some relief from the weather. A few arty shots and we were quickly off. There were a number of routes down depending on weather conditions but all options were going to be waterlogged do we took the one that seemed the shortest.

The shortest way just happened to be the route of Boggy doom with an hour of a water logged boggy path which left Steve spending more time on his knees and Eloise going waist deep at one point in between a couple of face plants. I was fortunately living a charmed existence and was David go lightly with hardly a spot if mud on me much to the others annoyance.

We eventually hit the river which we would follow all the way into keld. With it being crap weather we hadn't really stopped, but 20 mins into the river phase we cane upon the godsend of a shelter on the side of the path. It was only a corrugated open shelter about 5ft high but it felt like luxury. We also got to eat the sandwiches Eloise had made for us the night before. An odd combination of salad, houmous, and cranberry wensleydale cheese. Sounds odd but it was fantastic.

It was a good job we gad had such great food or the Closed cafe not far from the end or I might have cried after all the tempting advertising they had posted along the route.

Just a short peg to keld then and into the bunkhouse. It want quite what we expected. It was lovely - like a holiday rental apartment, with kitchen and dining table, sofas, drying room, washing machine, free tea and coffee and biscuits. It was heaven. In with us were a young couple from Durham and Rosie a cyclist from Edinburgh who would turn up later.

We got ourselves sorted, ordered food which was brought in for us which was delicious.

It was then out with the board games. First was pictionary. With me Steve and Rosie being robbed on the final turn and then scrable. Rosie was the dark horse and piped me and eloise at the post with some demon triple word score moves.

Bed quite late about 12 but a good fun evening and a relatively short day tomorrow.