Day 53, 27th June

I woke up at my usual six o'clock to a lovely day that promised to be very hot. The forecast had spoken of a heat wave with temperatures around thirty degrees. I packed up the tent, put all the boots on and got the big ones ready as Dazzy was still free, as usual. It was quite a cute sight when he decided to have a lie down in all his boots right next to the luggage, as if he were looking after it. Or he were the guard asleep on duty.

We went through beautiful countryside to Kirkby Lonsdale where I was happy to find a little Spar shop to fill up on bread and apples. There was just one sign post near the shop – and actually in a very practical place so as not to let the horses disturb the passing traffic – so I tied the team to it while I went inside to get what we needed. When I came out, the ponies and Maggie were totally surrounded by people who all looked very interested and many of them took photos. I was of course pleased to tell them about what we were doing and they all gave some donations to the charities and the lady from the Spar even came out and gave me some apples and carrots for the ponies, which made them very happy.

We rode on through the town and out the other side crossing the main A road in order to go on a quieter one. It actually was quite quiet, though with lots of bends and could have been potentially unsafe. A man in his car who usually rode a motorcycle stopped to warn me about it, telling me that bikes sped around the bends extremely fast and he hoped we would survive it. He actually passed us again from the other direction a few miles further on, just before the left the road, and was utterly amazed that we were still alive, he even said: “So you've made it; I didn't think you would!” Dear, one must think more positively!

After that we were on small lanes again and decided to come off our return route by a mile to stay at the auction grounds in High Bentham again, where we had stayed on the way north. It was a good place with good grass and a stream running along the edge, so had everything we needed. I even found a hose belonging to the auction where I could fill up my bottles with tap water rather than using the filter bottles like the last time we had been there. It tastes just that tiny bit better out of the tap and doesn't have the slight taste of iodene which the filtered water has.