Day 62 of the End to End in 2019 was the last day of section 2 of LEJOG. After this there was a week’s break until resuming on day 63 for part 3. The town we were heading for was Penrith which has quite a few roundabouts. The way into town overlapped with some sections marked as Lady Anne’s Way. More information about that here: https://www.ladyannesway.co.uk/
It wasn’t until January of 2020 when I really understood who Lady Anne was. She was Lady Anne Clifford and in January 2020 I was staying in Beamsley Hospital, a Landmark Trust house in North Yorkshire, that had been a project of her mother. It was Lady Anne Clifford that completed the hospital in her memory and then built her own in Appleby. These were places for poor women to live in safety and security, a kind of secular monasticism but with some religious aspects. The Beamsley women followed a rule for example and the central part of the building was, and still is, a chapel, but they were not professed.
Apart from Greggs in Penrith, the most memorable bit of Day 62 was the very long hill out of the town, with distant views of Blencathra. There was cake near the end and a final night at the old barn near Sedbergh before our week’s break.
The break had been dictated by my agreeing to take part in a summer school for ministers in the East Midlands. That was something I’d first done 19 years earlier and a revisit seemed overdue. I don’t think I could have done the whole LEJOG without a break, like Bob did and Hannah more or less (she just had 24 hours off to go and collect her A level results). I wasn’t in a hurry anyway, and as we got nearer the end I was in even less of a hurry.
So Penrith with its blend of showers and sunshine, sausage rolls and plague stone (photo above) was as good a place as any to break the route. We would be back.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus sent out 72 with instructions for their mission and when they came back….
From Psalm 121: I look up at the hills, I can’t stop myself, knowing that all your support is centred on me, day and night.
Stepping out, many routes,
Stepping on, green shoots,
Stepping One, stepping together,
One way or another, getting there.
JAL: 07.06.2020 in Longdendale.