Technically it’s Saturday 19th June, 1:30 in the morning to be precise, as I lie in bed, watching the plaster drift lazily down from the ceiling, dislodged by the endless vibrations from the juke box in the bar downstairs.
Every football fan from a thirty mile radius (the kind who thinks it’s a great idea to stick flags on both sides of his car) has assembled downstairs in the bar of The Buck Hotel to watch England’s dismal, dismal performance against the Uzbekistan Saturday Second Eleven reserve team.
Luckily the more unsavoury elements of Richmond society were not in evidence; the bouncers on the door underneath our window made sure of that.
But at least they washed their hands after going for a pee; I know this as the vibration from the hand dryer in the Gents was conducted directly up through the walls into our bedroom.
And there was me, yesterday thinking we’d got away with not being disturbed! How foolish! What a triumph of optimism over bitter experience!
While we’d been out during the day, celebrating Emma’s birthday, another flat screen TV had been installed in the Snug underneath our room, and the old men had been evicted to make room for more underage drinkers.
Smoker’s corner was directly under our window, where the punters analysed the game at the tops of their voices, and argued with each other over who was the worst player.
It all ended at around 2am, and I finally managed to get some sleep.
Anyway, back to the rest day. Fairly leisurely really, with a visit to one or two pubs while Lia moved the car from the gypsy caravan site to our final destination in Robin Hood’s Bay (Amanda kindly followed her there in her car, and gave her a lift back to Richmond)
We took a stroll around Richmond Castle before adjourning to the local Weatherspoons pub for a celebratory bottle of champagne. Big mistake. The dozy landlord insisted that the even dozier girl behind the bar open the bottle “as the cork might hit one of my customers”
Even as she took the wire top off the bottle we could all see the pressure start to force the cork out, but could only watch helplessly when it finally freed itself with a massive POP and took out one of the ceiling tiles. The girl screamed and just stood there watching the contents of bottle empty themselves all over the floor.
“Don’t just stand there, pour the damn thing!” I shouted at the dimwit. Which she did, but only after half the stuff had ended up on the floor.
This impressed Spike no end as you can imagine, who’d stumped up for this little luxury in the first place.
I can now, at least, happily record our first argument in the statistics; not between members of the party as I’d originally anticipated, but between me, Spike and the manager of the Weatherspoons pub in Richmond.
Sadly this is our last day with Amanda; an administrative cock up entirely of her own making prevented her from booking the full holiday required for the walk.
Amanda says farewell to us tomorrow morning (Saturday) when the remaining four of us, plus Sally, set off for the final seventy six mile push towards Robin Hood’s Bay. That’s seventy six miles in four days, possibly the most challenging section of all.
The Vale of Mowbray awaits us, on our longest stretch yet; twenty four miles in one day.
PS I forgot to mention that we’d completed our second National Park (the Dales) when we entered Richmond, so that’s another landmark completed.
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Blister count: Lia 1, Chris 1, Amada 1 HUGE one but getting better
Consecutive Full English Breakfasts: 11 out of a possible 12
Arguments: 1
Enjoying the blog. Keep up the good walk.... (Sorry)
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