Dales Way 5 Thursday 23rd March

Dales Way 5 Thursday 23^rd March

Map: OL30

Buckden to Ribblehead

It was a long drive to the end of the walk today, so we set off as early as we could. The office wasn’t open yet, so we pushed the keys through the letterbox, as last night was the final night we were staying at Bolton Abbey. Everywhere was still wet, but the sun was trying to show its face and everything was much brighter.

We took the A65 as far as Ingleton, then turned right, past the Ribblehead viaduct and along the road to a farm. There was some parking by the side of the road, so we left my van there and set off back to the start of the walk at Buckden in Sandra’s van. That necessitated going through Hawes, through Askrigg and then turning sharp right just before Leyburn. The road was very narrow and twisty, with a right angle bend onto a narrow bridge and another right angle bend off it again. I knew it would be mostly second gear for my van when we came back to collect Sandra’s van at the end of the walk and I wasn’t even sure I could actually negotiate the bridge at all – it seemed far too narrow for my lumbering motor home. I just hoped I wouldn’t meet anything coming the opposite direction when I came to do the drive.

We arrived at Buckden and set off for the walk. 

Buckden even has its own red phone bow:

It was about 12 noon, but because we had been setting off at around 10.30am on previous days, that was when I made a major mistake – I didn’t realise it was actually lunch time and set off to do the walk, thinking we would eat when we got half way, which was Beckermonds.

The first part of the walk was across some meadows. 

It was still very wet under foot, but the sun came out and was very welcome. 

When we arrived at Hubberholme, we joined the road for a short while to cross the river by the bridge.

Once over the bridge, we detoured slightly (ie through the gate) to look at the church:

The path goes around to the right of the church and then behind it. Ahead of us were two people with two collies, both off lead, but both pretty well behaved. We were gaining on them and due to Storm’s reactivity, I hoped we could pass them with a wide berth. Sandra offered to go ahead and ask them if they would mind just waiting till we passed. When I caught up with her, the couple with the dogs had continued on their way, so I presumed their response was actually ‘no’. Sandra said they hadn’t said ‘no’ but that they would move to the side when we caught them up and needed to pass. Trouble was, they speeded up, so we also speeded up, thinking we ought to be ahead of them. This went on for three or four fields. When we got to the end of the meadows, the path narrowed, between the river and the fence; we followed the couple with the dogs for at least one or two stiles before the path widened on the river side and they finally pulled over. We had been trotting for about two or three miles! Finally we were past and were able to go at our own speed.

We passed a stone circle by the side of the river.

The path followed the river and the road - the river was between us and the road; when we got to Yockenthwaite, we crossed the river using the bridge on the road, and the road also crossed, so we were still separated from the road by the river, but now on opposite sides.

The path was very wet and slippery, not least because it was limestone rocks and the ground to out left sloped slightly and all the rain was pouring off the fields, across the path and into the river.

And the river was very full:

Now the signs that things were going awry were evident, but I didn’t see them and Sandra was not familiar with them either. OH would have told me to stop and eat, whether I wanted to or not, but Sandra was unaware that there was an issue – and so was I (I’ll explain more later). We passed a signpost near Yockenthwaite that said ‘Beckermonds 2¼ miles >’. My immediate thought was ‘surely we have done more than ¾ mile since we set off!’ Well of course we had – the distance to Beckermonds is about 6 miles, not 3! We had actually come almost 4 miles by this time, much of it done at a faster than normal pace. That should have been enough of a cue to recognise that my blood sugar was too low, but the nature of having low blood sugar means even when the signs are staring you in the face, you don’t recognise them.

We continued on towards Beckermonds. By now, I was shaking and pale and knew what was happening (at last!). I couldn’t hold a conversation, as I’d lose track of what I was saying half way through a sentence. Even though I was now aware that I needed to eat, I thought ‘it’s only another half mile; I can do that!’ Judgment is also impaired when blood sugar gets too low! 

Beckermonds has a ford to cross the river. Thankfully it also has a bridge, because the ford was impassable! 

Ford? Not today, thanks!

It is the place where two rivers join together and become the Wharfe. 

From here on, we would no longer be following the Wharfe, which had accompanied us since the start at Ilkley. I hoped also that Beckermonds would be big enough to have a pub (where I could sit down) and a phone box (so I could call a taxi to get me back to the car). It had neither – it was literally a farm with a new house built in its back garden.

A short Biology Lesson

There is a condition known as CSID/GSID which stands for Chronic/Genetic sucrase isomaltase deficiency. It affects about 1 in 250,000 (or 1 in 5000, depending which research you are reading). With so many affected, you’d think it would be well recognised by the medical professionals – yet very few, including medical personnel, have even heard of it.

Everyone has genes; attached to those genes are things called ‘alleles’. One of my alleles is faulty. That allele controls the enzymes sucrase and maltase. These are necessary for the digestion of common or garden sugar – sucrose – the white stuff people put on their breakfast cereal. Sucrose is what is known as a disaccharide. That means it is composed of two different sugars. In order to digest a disaccharide, the two sugars need to be separated. That is where the enzymes come in – they separate the molecules and then the body can digest the sugar. The result of not being able to digest sucrose is that the levels of glucose in the blood can swing wildly from too much to too little in someone affected by CSID. It means in simple terms, I can’t eat much (if anything) that has sugar in it and I have to eat frequently in order to keep my blood sugar balanced. This morning, I set off having not eaten lunch before we walked – it was already lunch time and I hadn’t realised it. Not realising what the time was is in itself a sign that my blood sugar was low. Seeing the road Sandra drove along as very narrow and twisty was also a sign – I have driven along it since and I have no idea why I thought it was so impassable. There are even white lines up the middle of it for much of its distance! Then mistaking the sign post and distances was another sign that my brain was not coping with simple things. In short, there were plenty of signs, but I missed them, because the condition itself is not conducive to recognising what is going on, sometimes until it is too late.

People often think that if you have a problem with blood sugar, then you ought to eat something sweet to counteract it and put extra sugar into the blood stream rapidly. That often works for people with diabetes, who need a quick boost. Unfortunately, that is the worst thing you can do for someone with CSID. The brain recognises that you are eating something sweet and sends out the troops (insulin) to round up the sugar molecules. But the sugar never arrives, because it isn’t digested at all, so it isn’t converted into glucose and never reaches the blood. The insulin that has been released, removes even more glucose from the blood, which of course makes matters worse!

I pulled my lunch out of my rucksack and ate – rapidly! We found a rock sticking out of the wall that was just big enough to sit on – so I sat!

There wasn’t much improvement even after eating lunch, so I was thankful when Sandra decided that the best course of action then was for her to walk back to her car at Buckden, collect me from where we were and drive me back to my van at Ribblehead. There was no way I was going to walk the other 6½ miles scheduled for today.

After Sandra set off back the way we had come, but using the road, not the path, I rested for a while then began to get cold, so I slowly walked back along the road towards Yockenthwaite. When I got that far, I sat on a wall in the sunshine for a while, until a group of school children arrived to get into their minibus, which was parked across the road from me. Storm is not fond of children so I got up and moved a little way along the road, coming very soon to a farm called Raisgill. They have a ‘no vehicle access’ sign on their gate and another facing the road, indicating no vehicle access onto the vertical grass bank beside their house!! I was just taking a photograph of it, when Sandra arrived in the car. I was very thankful to see her.

We drove back towards Beckermonds and up over the hill in the direction we would have walked had we continued. We passed a big house called Oughtershaw Hall which I recognised as a place that had been for sale some years previously and we had been to look at it with a view to running a business form it. Unfortunately the garden is a steep gorge, so it would not have been suitable for what we had in mind.

The snow over the top was really thick at both sides of the road – 12-18 inches. It didn’t deter the odd cyclist though! We reached the van at Ribblehead, with me eating all the way, still with little improvement. I was totally washed out.

We drove the two vehicles down to the road into Hawes, but turned left to Garsdale. Now that road was pretty narrow! The farm we were to park at had said there was hard standing, for which we were thankful, but when we arrived, the ‘hard standing’ turned out to be gravel spread over soil, so I’m afraid we churned it up rather when parking. There were also zero facilities here – no toilets and no water either!

After that, we drove into Sedbergh, where I ate a plate full of chips (carbohydrate is good for resolving CSID issues usually). Back at the campsite it was really dark and the sky was just beautiful – so many stars!

And then we had a new problem. The light telling me the leisure battery was low came on. OH suggested I drive around for an hour or two in order to charge it up. But I had just driven not long before, from the top of Ribblehead to the camp site at Gargrave in the first place. Besides it was not about 9pm – there was no way I was going to drive about those narrow country lanes at that time of night! So as it was a reasonable time to do so, we went to bed.