Avoiding returning to the Pennine Way, we used our Komoot App for a shorter route to Middleton. We set off over fields and then onto the moor; however the paths at times were non existent and very difficult to follow. Add to this the heat and high pollen count – I wasn’t a very cheerful companion! However, the afternoon was quite different: we stopped at a pub for a drink and a lovely meat and cheese platter and then followed the Tees Railway Path, accompanied by a pleasant breeze. We soon arrived at our very pleasant accommodation to relax, eat and prepare for the next part of our journey.

A Backward Glance

Today was interesting. Today Mr Kamoot showed his true colours and mocked us relentlessly. Our walk meant leaving the Pennine Way to get to the only lodgings available to us, which entailed navigating across open moor. It started well: through a stile with an ancient wooden post having an arrow pointing in the same direction as Mr. Kamoot was telling Carol. Across a field of long grass, no path, climbing over a locked gate with ‘Bull in Field’ sign on it (always a good indicator that it’s a permitted route), then tip toeing through the back garden of a farm house and home to dozens of neurotic chickens and finally into the vast open space of the moor. ‘Follow path for five hundred feet then turn right’. There was no path, but there was a stone wall aligning with the direction of travel being given Carol. So we continued into the boggy deep clumpy grass with the dozens of streams coursing across. Then it starts: ‘Take the next right onto path’. There is no path, there never was a path, a path there was not. We’re in too far now and we have to trust AI for survival, says Carol. For the next two hours Carol is arguing with me, her ‘friend’ and herself as we zig zag along non existent paths through ravines, jumping over deep peat channels and ankle twisting rutted bog, in the vast empty expanse. I’m arguing we’re going West we should be going North and Carol insists West is where we need to be heading. Then I shout we’re going East and we should be going North and Carol shouts back waving her phone angrily you’re not on the ‘blue line’, keep up and keep behind me. At the end, Carol admitted that if we’d just joined up the corners of Kamoot’s zig zag blue line route we’d have saved a good two miles, an hour of scrambling in the heat and our marriage. Eventually we reached civilisation, downed two pints of O&L each with a shared plate of victuals (but Carol pinched all the cheese and pickled onion; clearly still not forgiven). I promised to go to marriage counselling if she went on an Outward Bound survival training course.