Day four, the first of the two days walking in Swaledale was bright and sunny but with a cold wind and the occasional hail shower.

As you will remember if you have been reading this blog, my original road route was changed in February to an "off road" route for reasons of safety - too much fast moving traffic I was told!!! I have to admit that I was slightly worried about this. Comments like "this will be a hard day for you" and "there will be a lot of going up and down - this is Swaledale," whilst realistic ,did make me a bit anxious. I needn't have worried - well not much anyway.

I met my guide for the day at Keld and we set off having checked the first RV ( rendevous) point with Peter. Colin who was walking with me, probably wondered what he had let himself in for. The walk started with a quite steep flight of steps down to a bridge and then a long drawn out ascent which soon had me puffing - knew I shouldn't have had the porridge for breakfast!!

Seriously though, I soon got into my stride and started to enjoy the magnificent scenery looking down on the Swale winding its way through the dale, with little clusters of cottages well dug into the hillsides. It must be really cold up here in the winter though.

We met Peter with the back up car as arranged, first at Gunnerside, then south of Isles Bridge where we had to dry off after a sharp sleety shower ( see photo) and finally at Browna Gill Bridge before walking into Reeth just after 2.15. Not even an ice cream waiting for us after all that effort, it's just not good enough - even the pie shop was closed.

Thank you ver much Colin for "volunteering" to walk with me, and for gamely having your photo taken with "Hero" the bear. I now know a lot more about the history of Drums and Bugles in the British Army and about the Coldstream Guards, it was all fascinating. It was a good job that you didn't let on what was going to happen on Friday at Catterick, I might have turned tail and retreated........the rest of you will have to wait until the report for Day 6 to find out what happened.