photos posted on Facebook

If you're interested in seeing the photos from our trip, click these links (separately):

Album 1: Manchester & Wales

Album 2: The Cumbria Way

have reached Carlisle alive

We did it! And actually walked the whole way, despite entertaining thoughts of taking a bus or train from time to time.

Yesterday was the longest & hardest day for us, 15 or 16 miles made more difficult by sheer exhaustion. Main lesson learned on this trek: we were not as in shape as we thought we were.

Celebrated our arrival in Carlisle last night by hobbling a few blocks to a lovely Italian restaurant, where we ate 4 courses and drank lots of wine. Delish!

At the moment is pouring buckets outside while we finish up our time on the Internet in the Central Library. Don't have much on the agenda today except Starbucks and getting back to Manchester. Is so refreshing to not have to walk across poop-littered fields and through mud and over miles and miles of uneven, stone-covered paths. No steep climbs for us today. Whoopee!

A brief sketch of our Lake District walk: dripping sweat, beating sun, aching feet and legs, lots of sheep and cows, even more sheep and cow shit, losing the trail every day and walking at least a mile out of the way, hating the stupid guidebook, learning to read the map (sort of), clear streams, wildflowers galore, dramatic hills, mountains and valleys, long blue lakes, wading across fields of tall grass, a grand sense of accomplishment.