LIMESTONE COUNTRY - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 67

rather busier main street (A685), though the latter may be joined at any
one of a number of points.
In the end, an alleyway leads right, to the Black Bull Inn, while a short
way further, a counterpart favours the Pennine Hotel, directly opposite the
Market Place, from where the onward route departs.
Walkers bound for the youth hostel should either join the A685 by one
of the earlier opportunities, or turn right on reaching the main street near
the Market Place.
Many walkers will have traversed this section from Shap in one day, and
will no doubt welcome the chance to put up their feet, and maybe down
a few pints! Others may have wandered across in a rather more leisurely
fashion, stopping perhaps at Orton. But few will have done either without
acquiring a sense of the ancient, a passage through time, extending over
two, three, maybe four thousand years into the dawning of man's time
in northern Britain. Opportunities to experience so much in so relatively
short a distance are rare. Only a soulless, blinkered person could pass by
without so much as a thought for our prehistory, and, thankfully, very few
of those have the spirit or imagination it takes to become long-distance
walkers.
And if this ancient fantasy land has aroused something within you, make
sure it is well secured in your memory before advancing into the chip-
smelly, traffic-hogged streets of Kirkby Stephen. This, in spite of the
town's undoubted charms, is the 21st century, and something of a culture
shock.