Preparation



After our first long-distance walk in 2022 on the Hadrian's Wall Path, John and I knew we wanted to return to England for another "tromp." We reread James Herriot's books last year (All Creatures Great and Small and others he wrote about his life as a country veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales) and settled on walking The Dales Way. It's an eighty-plus-mile trail that begins in Ilkley and ends in the Lake District at Bowness-on-Windermere. We'll have six days of walking. This time, we're excited that our brother and sister-in-law, Chuck and Susy, will join us. We'll stay at B&Bs and inns along the way, and a sherpa service will pick up our luggage each morning and deliver it to our next stop. As with our last trip, Maximum Adventure has set up our lodging and other logistics.

We have been training for this walk for quite some time, only rarely missing a day. Most days, we've walked or hiked at least 3-5 miles, alternating long flat walks with hilly ones. We've carried loaded packs at times and refreshed our memories on using the trekking poles that we found so useful last time. All the exercise has been good for us, and we feel prepared for this adventure.

The past couple of days the main challenge has been managing the weight of our luggage. The sherpa service has a strict 18kg limit (just under 40 pounds), in contrast to the airline's more generous 50 pounds. We've cut down the number of clothes and shoes we'd planned to take but not the protein bars and trail mix. Last time we were surprised to find that many markets in the UK didn't stock those items.

Our last trip helped us see what pieces of our equipment we might want to tweak, and I'm excited to use my new and improved backpack, hiking socks, and half-size-larger boots (I'm hoping not to lose as many toenails this time). John has a new drone to play with, and it will be fun to get some aerial shots.

We have good rain gear with us, but at the moment, the forecast is perfect--no rain, a little cloudy, and temperatures ranging from 55-65 degrees.

We leave the US tomorrow and will begin the walk next Tuesday after spending a couple of days in London and Thirsk, the actual town where James Herriot/Alf Wight practiced.

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