Day 7 – Bampton to Orton ( 13 miles)

After a very disappointing breakfast (which reduced our scoring on the hotel at Bampton to just a 9 out of 10) we set off at 9.44am. A great start as all we had to do was to go through a church yard opposite where we had stayed. Gail the trail blazer decided that we had to walk around the church first which added another 100 yards to the trip, much to the annoyance of the boys!

All was going really well today as the walking was easy and gentle until we came across the smallest gate in the world. This was fine until Neil had to go through, not an easy task with his medium build!!!

We reach Shap Abbey at 10.38 and after a small detour we headed to Shap where we bought lunch, Of course with this task allocated to Jacqui and Gail, it took over half an hour to buy four sandwiches and a bag of crisps!

The next milestone for us was the M6, which we crossed at 12.02, which is a third of our walk. We stopped to look back to Lakeland and Kidsty Pike, where we were 23 hours earlier.

After crossing the M6 we headed to Oddendale where we stopped for our lunch in the sunshine at 12.37.

We carried on toward our destination, passing the Erratic Boulder (known by us as the Erotic Boulder) and then on to Orton where we are staying, arriving at the George Hotel at 3.09 in bright warm sunny weather.

On arrival, we were met by Miles, Sarah, Emily and Sam who had called in to see us on their way back from their holiday in Scotland, which was fantastic (particularly as they took away a load of dirty laundry with them).

We are now in the bar at 7.20, playing darts, drinking Cumberland ale (which is very good). The George Hotel is probably the least good place that we have stayed, on our rating we have given it a 3/10, which is being generous!