Richie and I got married in October 2019 and we had grand plans for an exotic honeymoon in the Spring of 2020. Now we all know what a mess 2020 turned out to be due to the global Covid 19 pandemic, and after moving the honeymoon 3 times, plus changing the destination entirely we eventually decided to cancel our trip abroad. We didn’t however want to forgo a honeymoon so instead we set about exploring the UK on a 2 week car based travelling extravaganza!

We knew we wanted to do a lot of walking/hiking, and also to eat in nice places so we looked at the map and decided to aim for Cornwall – a place we have always wanted to go. Now as that is around a 560 mile drive for us we thought best to break it up with a few stops, and also gave an opportunity to explore some other places on the way.

Our first destination was Reeth in North Yorkshire. The weather was pretty awful (officially the wettest day in UK history) and as Reeth was a few hours drive away we decided to stop on the way at a museum recommended by my parents, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle. The museum is excellent, set in a French Chatteau style building it can easily take up 2 hours to explore the rooms and grounds. We had a lovely lunch of soup and sandwiches in the cafe, and were happily out of the rain. One of the top finds were these plates by Paul Scott which illustrated American scenes on traditional ceramics.

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We drove on down through the howling rain towards Reeth- I would love to say we saw wonderful scenery on the way but we couldn’t see anything through the soggy windscreen. We arrived late afternoon at our accommodation, The Burgoyne Hotel which is a small country hotel located in the centre of the village. Because the weather was so foul we hunkered down for the rest of the day in the hotel, and enjoyed a delicious dinner. The hotel has a small lounge and bar, along with a separate restaurant which serves reasonably expensive food.

Luckily the next day the weather had cleared and after a hearty breakfast we were able to get out and explore Reeth. Reeth is a reasonably small village nestled in the Swaledale area of the Yorkshire Dales, surrounded on all sides by tall fells. It is quite well set up with 3-4 hotels plus a couple of shops, all set around a lovely green. We knew we wanted to do some walking and decided on a route which started and finished in the village to avoid needing to venture out in the car. After looking at the surrounding hills, and a trip to the post office where we bought a very useful map, the route we chose was along Fremington Edge.

We set off east out of the village along the road, and then onto a riverside path which passed Grinton and continued east along the River Swale. We passed Marrick Priory (now an outdoor excursion centre) and then headed off up a path through Steps Wood. This path was the route that the nuns used to take from Marrick down to the Priory. The path is a long series of steps, but due to the rain the day before it was effectively a large burn to plough up which added to the interest of the walk!

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The walk continued up through Marrick and on towards Fremington Edge on a small road. We turned off the lane and onto the path which stretches long the top of the ridge, climbing steadily for a few miles. The path runs parallel to a wall which separates the front of the ridge from the moor behind, which means there are a few boggy bits to work around.

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The views down across the valley over Reeth and beyond were really impressive, which encouraged us to walk further than we had intended. We almost reached the end of the ridge before we realised we had been walking for over 3 hours and should probably head back. We scrambled down from the ridge to the path which runs parallel to the river Arkle Beck and headed back along to Reeth.

Needless to say when we got back we were pretty hungry, having only had some cereal bars to keep us going on the 12 mile walk, so we headed to the Black Bull hotel on the green to tuck into a hearty Yorkshire meal. This was basically a huge Yorkshire pudding filled with mash, gravy and delicious sausages.