Writing on my Rest Day because I just wasn’t feeling it yesterday. Despite it being short (8.1 miles) and relatively flat (along the old railway track, except for a big staircase up and down to walk across the 100+ feet high Victorian engineering feat of the Lambley Viaduct, and later a scramble up through the brush of the embankment of the railway track to reach a different footpath and then follow it back down to the River South Tyne and back up again to cross over it), I was tired and my brain was soggy from rain I guess. We reached Greenhead, our first stop along Hadrian’s Wall, to find our hostel (a private one, not one of the established Youth Hostel Association/YHA membership) to be a bit subpar. It is clean enough, and the bed (not bunk beds thankfully!) is comfortable, but the shower is not working, all but one of the electrical outlets in our room have frayed wires and don’t work, there is minimal loo paper, soap and hand towels, there are random clothes laying around, dirty beer glasses and toiletries in the bathroom, kitchen sink is broken. It’s all a bit old and meh. I’m spoiled after our stay in the Kirkstyle Inn I suppose. It’s good to just get back to basics, and I am warm, have a good roof over my head, and it’s quiet. Gratitude.
The walk yesterday was quite nice really. It was raining hard in the morning, so we didn’t rush breakfast and had a late start. I wore all my rainproof plastic stuff (kills me environmentally, but these manmade materials do keep one dry!) The day was one of those rain off and on kind of ones, so it was hood off and on too. It started promisingly through a narrow shelter of trees, and we were sheltered much of the day. There were a few new and pretty flowers. Some bushes of scotch broom appeared, which I immediately have a negative reaction to because of its invasive spread throughout California, but here it is natural so I could just enjoy the cheery yellow of its branches. We passed friendly people, everyone saying something upbeat about the weather, like “A bright spot’s coming over there,” or “Will do the flowers well!” or “Bit fresh today!” We passed old train platforms, now absorbed into lovely overflowing gardens of private houses converted from station houses. The Lambley viaduct, built in 1852, made the highlight reel of the day. It’s huge, and I loved walking up to and then right under - touching even - its giant stone arches. By the time I was walking across it I was in a very bouncy mood. https://m.youtube.com/shorts/CzWOqRdhubo?ra=m
After the viaduct, we did need to do a bit of navigation wizardry to get to a footpath that would provide a small shortcut. We found a small gap in the vegetation and gratefully a shorter-than-most stone wall, and joined it. Coming to farmhouses shortly thereafter and no clear public footpath sign, I was a bit worried. Sometimes there are not very welcoming dogs behind the fences. To my relief, and delight, there was a big, beautiful hen and her friends, and some quacky white ducks who turned and waddled away immediately upon seeing us. The farm was lovely, children’s play equipment in the interior courtyard, delightful red paint against the stone, and a curious round barn building. And, there was a footpath sign halfway through. We continued on across a road and into a small forest, that took us back to the bulging, fast flowing Tyne River. All that rain on the moors we’ve been squelching through is making its way down in a high rising fury. Fortunately, it was still about a half a foot away from submerging the pathway. Back up again to cross an old footbridge and into Haltwhistle.
Haltwhistle’s name has nothing to do with the important 19th century train routes through the area (which is where I was leaning); it’s an old Medieval English name meaning hilltop ‘hal’ and twice/two ‘twhistle’, so a rise between two rivers, which is exactly where it sits. It’s a town with a lot of history. We returned by bus today to do laundry and get provisions for the next few days as we’ll be quite remote and backpacking for a couple nights soon. And I could not have been happier. If you’ve spent any time with me out walking, you know it is physically impossible for me to pass any type of informational sign and not become absorbed. I’ll cross a street, stand on a bench, double back, miss a bus, anything to soak up all the details in diagrams, photos, illustrations, narrative. The best thing about the camera on my phone is that I can snap a quick shot and then reread and zoom in to my heart’s content.
Haltwhistle is a sign reader’s paradise! There is a three-sided display at the train station, and a human sundial with accompanying info board, there are detailed metal signs all over the town telling about its tough history being repeatedly attacked for 300 years by border Reivers (marauding clans of thieves, murderers, arsonists, extortionists who terrorized the lawless unsettled border land between Scotland and England until James I/VI starting hanging perpetrators or shipping them off to Ireland - Ulster Scots, and the American colonies - Scotch Irish in the Appalachia region) There are blue plaques on the buildings describing the specialized houses, or fortified ‘bastles’, people lived in to protect themselves. There were more signs that described the hundreds of years of back and forth battles between the English and the Scottish that so unsettled the region it led to the necessary rise of the lawless way of life to steal because constant war made survival so tenuous. (I wish we could better learn from this history under our noses and not continue to fuel the violence of war across the globe. It only leads to generations of pain & suffering & hatred. Stepping off soapbox now…) I took a break from wandering around to have lunch at evidently the award winner for the ‘best café in England’; lunch was fine, but I’m dubious about the honor. Continuing my reading, there were memorials, photos and a big rock honoring the mining boom in the area, and very exciting news that Haltwhistle is considered the geographic center of Britain. If you cut out a map of the whole island from cardboard you could balance and spin it on your finger centered around Haltwhistle; or so Bill says, I haven’t tried it. All of that on top of the fact that Hadrian’s Wall is only a couple of miles from the town; this place was swarming with thousands of Roman soldiers for hundreds of years. The wall was started in earnest by Emperor Hadrian when he visited in AD122, and started to define the reaches of the Empire rather than keep expanding it. Now the bus that runs along the wall, and that we are taking tomorrow to get us to the start of the day’s walk, is assigned the number AD122 in honor of the event. On the way back from town today I saw a whole bunch of people on top of a hill slowly walking around looking down. A couple of them were squatting. Then I saw all of the stones and realized it was an active - and large - excavation site.
My mind can’t grasp all the people who have passed by here, and now I am adding my lived experience to the space. All of us temporary visitors, just passing through, absorbed in our own moments. It’s all so transitory and yet I think of my life as so big and important; I can’t help but do this really. And it is, of course: and simultaneously it is not. Holding this truth of the beautiful present, along with the acknowledgement that it will just wash away and fade in time is an important thing. I am feeling this very deeply as I walk; each step where so many have stepped as well, wearing such different footwear. That’s what sinks in. All the different shoes that have walked the paths that mine are now. It makes me smile. Wonder and smile. Tomorrow we walk the ancient wall, and my mind will wander to all those leather sandals marching along.
