Dear reader, you may be interested to know that, two years ago, Dr. Eugenia Cheng of Sheffield University claimed to have developed the perfect cream tea formula. The formula purported to produce the correct ratio of jam to cream as follows:

Where: r = radius of the scone

Thickness of Cream =     r3   
                      8(r-1)2

Thickness of Jam   =     3r3  
                     40(r-1/2)2

 As a result of intensive research, Dr. Cheng concluded that based on a scone diameter of 60mm, then:
* The ideal thickness of jam is 2.3mm;
* The ideal thickness of cream is 4mm;
* The ideal scone thickness is 28mm;
* Jam should go on the scone first;
* For stability, the area of cream should be 5mm smaller than the jam;
 and to prevent dripping:
* There should be a 5mm rim around the scone uncovered by jam or cream.
 

You might feel that for pointless research, it doesn't get much more pointless than this but, as I said in my last piece, I usually start each blog entry with a fairly random starting paragraph and it might appear that this is, indeed, pretty random! Fair point! But in actual fact, the cream tea business is all very relevant, because poor old Jim has been desperate for a cream tea since the day we arrived. The trouble is, whenever we tried to have one, we either arrived too late or the place we were aiming for, was closed!


But today was to be the day. Today's leg was a relatively short 8 miler from Shap to Orton and having now left the Lake District, the big hills are behind us! All being well, we would be in Orton early afternoon and this would be our chance. Cream tea was on and, what's more, Jim was offering to pay! But it would be a few hours before we got there, so want happened beforehand?

Well, we awoke to a beautiful sunny morning and Margaret treated us to a superb breakfast; yet another good brekkie on this trip. So good, in fact, that it was a struggle to get up and be on our way, especially after the trials and tribulations of yesterday's epic trek. That reminds me, a quick check this morning revealed that yesterday's walk which took us eight and a half hours to complete, would have taken us a mere 20 minutes if we had gone by car!!! A sobering, although fairly pointless statistic!

 







Today's group picture was taken in the lovely garden of Brookfield, with Steve sneakily checking out the bus timetables for a quick way out! There was enough time to take a picture of the B&B as the sun was rising overhead and thanks to my newly taught photography skills, I was able to get a nice pic using maximum exposure compensation on the camera - thanks Karen Bayliss. 

 

Luckily, Brookfield House looks straight in the direction of Patterdale and we were able to get a far better view of a Kidsty Pike today from 10 miles away, than we could from 10 yards away yesterday! And somehow, even the same view with a power pylon in the way, also seemed to look attractive in the morning sun.


 







For today's walk, Tina took over map reading and Steve had the guide book in preparation for next week. I was using Tim's GPS gizmo. It may have been a case of the blind, leading the visually challenged, but we still managed to arrive at Orton safely. About half a mile after the start, we reached, arguably, the high point of today's leg (joking, of course), the imperious and majestic M6, carving its way through the countryside like a rusty knife through butter.  

 

The rest of the walk was very pleasant, in lovely weather, skirting round the hamlet of Oddendale, before wasting the best part of 20 minutes, debating which way to go, about a mile on from Oddendale. Some might argue that the route we chose to go on (which was the correct one, incidentally) was pretty obvious, but the combined powers of map, book and gizmo, struggled to work it out! Anyway, we were soon (ish) on our way and the remaining hike was pretty uneventful; almost a 'walk in the park' after yesterday.

 

Before very long, we were strolling into Orton. A very pretty little village, but amazingly, a village with its own chocolate factory! Kennedys is a small, family owned business set up Orton in 1991 and now employing over 30 people and supplying their high quality chocolates all over the UK. And it was in the Kennedys tea room, that Jim got his cream tea. But not only a cream tea! He also had a milkshake and what's more, most of the rest of us had ice cream sodas, evoking real childhood memories. The only trouble was, they had run out of clotted cream, which was a bit of a shame (had to be double cream instead), but we got by. Jim very generously paid for everyone and then.......... we all purchased a few wares from the chocolate shop!


 
 
We had a quick nose in the church, before walking down the road to tonight's B&B, the fabulous Barn House, where we were warmly welcomed by Judith & Peter. This is a large property, beautifully decorated and furnished. Judith had re-arranged the beds in what are normally double rooms, to have the ladies in one twin, three chaps in one room, all single beds and one chap with a double room to himself. We tossed a coin for it and, remarkably, I won!
 
We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon, before walking back to the George pub in the village for dinner which, once again, was excellent. Fiona, a friend of Tina's, joined us for dinner and will walk with us for a while tomorrow.
 
So that's today. Roughly 75 miles completed to date and 7 days gone. Tomorrow, we do 13 miles and return to our mid way point of Kirkby Stephen, where Tim, Jim and Marie will leave us, which really will be very sad......it's been a great few days and we have had a lot of laughs. But, at the same time, Jane, another friend of Tina's, will join us for week two and, I suspect that there will be a lot more adventures and laughs to come!!! And I'm sure that Tim, Jim & Marie will be following our every footstep next week with wonder and amazement!

 Today's interesting facts are:
* We had our first view of the Pennines today, which we will cross on Sunday;
* For future reference Steve, the bus from Shap to Orton is number 106;
* At 1050ft, the section of the M6 at Shap Fell is the second highest motorway in the UK, second only to the M62 at Saddleworth Moor;