Day 5 - Thursday: "Cavalry charge to the wild west"

So blog followers as you should know by now the team have been split up in separate B&Bs each night. Meeting up on this penultimate day of trekking couldn't have been any easier as we materialised on opposite sides of the road. And before we knew it we were all together and off for the day.
Our ever reliant (not) weather forecasters had set us the challenge today to outpace the rain clouds and get to Carlisle before the expected downpour. We need not have feared. Yet again we beat the weather, in fact it was another lovely day.
Today was about true grit, pace and determination. Ok, the terrain was so much flatter than the middle third. But the soft ground, mud and constant side stepping to avoid cow pats and sheep droppings took its toll on the team's aching limbs. The scenery may have not been as panoramic as we had seen in previous days, yet it was a case of England's green and pleasant farmland which gradually changed from livestock to the arable variety.
The team has taken on various guises as we've traversed Northern England. Favoured types have included a Roman legion and land loving pirates with a penchant for tourette induced shouting. There was extra excitement mid-morning when the team turned into cowboys to fend off a feared attack by indians. This was a 21st century version as a couple of Apache gunship helicopters hovered over our route for near to a quarter of an hour.
After lunch the Project Managing Map Readers Daz and Neil yomped into the distance leaving the rest of the team to rely on the DuraC bunny. And for just the 3rd time we took a wrong turn leading up a dead end before traversing the M6.
As we had our last sight of the remains of Hadrians Wall the countryside morphed into the civilisation of the City of Carlisle and the return of mobile phone signals.
In the end we completed the 13.75 miles in near record time and also sent the weather packing as not a drop of rain was felt all day.
Following an early arrival at our B&Bs the team fought off the temptation of a collective old man late afternoon snooze and reconvened for a debrief over beers and darts. Caesar Steady then took us to the Romana restaurant for an excellent Italian meal. As half the team retired the rest descended on the Beehive pub for a night cap and to check out the latter part of the pub quiz. The locals were great and after some good banter were extremely kind and donated the takings from the quiz to the Trek for Joe fund. The whole team will be back there for some end of Trek beers tonight.
Finally, for the stattos amongst you the scores on the doors for the day were 22.14km in 29521 steps and burning a respectable 1482 calories.