Dales Walk Day 5 Dent to Sedbergh

A very short day for us today. We are only walking the six miles to Sedbergh and will have an afternoon of leisure to look around the small market town.

The group photo this morning was one of the funniest on the walk. Paul and myself use the timers on our cameras and find some appropriate place to leave them, then rush back to get into the photo. This morning we both seemed to have a problem with the timers and we were dashing back to the group only to find neither timer was working. Cyclists stopped, drivers stopped, passers by stopped and offered to take the photo but we were determined to do it with the self timers and this was the result. What you can't see are the number of spectators we had watching this farce.

There was no hurry to get going this morning which was just as well as we didn't get going until 11am as we had to wait for the Heritage Centre to open so that Tina could redeem her 'walking pole' which she had left there yesterday.

It did give the boys time to play on the machinery though.

The weather today was gorgeous and once on our way we were rewarded with fabulous views of  Deepdale.

On leaving the village of Dent we joined the path again alongside the River Dee.

We passed through a number of gates and gaps

An interesting group of an alpaca and two lambs. No sign of their mother.

This is the last footbridge over the river Dee that we cross. It turned out to be the perfect place to play  'pooh sticks'!

Whose stick came under the bridge first?

We stopped for a brief drink and to shed another layer as the temperature rose.

The path takes us across open pastures overlooking Sedbergh and the surrounding Howgill fells.

The track then led us through the delightful village of Millthrope.

The road took us across the River Rawthey into the town of Sedbergh.

The word Sedbergh comes from the Norse for flat topped hill and the town promotes itself as England's book town as many of its shops sell books.

The town is probably more well known for its independent boarding school founded in 1525.

We didn't have a packed lunch today as it was such a short walk but we did enjoy a cream tea in one of the tea shops in the town. We were joined by Steve's daughter, her husband and children who were on holiday in the Dales. Our third set of visitors on the walk. By sheer coincidence our free afternoon happened to coincide with the semi final of the F.A. cup so the boys were keen to watch the match whilst Tina and myself took advantage of a quiet couple of hours as there wasn't as much to see in the town as we had hoped.

 The Dalesman, where three of us were staying. Tim, Jim and Paul  stayed in a small cottage down the road as there were no available rooms for them in the pub. Our evening meal in the pub was delicious but unlike my recent trip to the USA there are no late nights on this trip. Once our evening meal was over we were all ready for an early night.