Great 11.5 mile day today, with 1,544ft of ascent. The first half of the day was most of that climbing, and it was due to following along Hadrian’s Wall with its up and down rolling hills and escarpments of whin sill rock. The rain held off, just a few sprinkles here and there; a strong breeze, but not enough to challenge one’s stability. And the sky provided a dramatic backdrop to the green of the fields stretching into the distance. This is my third time visiting this very impressive Roman ruin, and it never fails to impress. It was particularly interesting walking away from it northwards, and looking back, the way the northern tribes would have seen it. The museums and visitor sections are all set up from the southern Roman side, but from the other side it is really formidable stretching out along the high rocky prominences. It would have definitely been a clear indicator of the power dynamic 1900 years ago here.
The best thing today though was meeting my dad here, figuratively. During breakfast this morning I was reflecting upon my previous trips to the wall, in 1994 and in 2009. I started looking through photos stored on my phone. There are some we’ve transferred to store digitally, and luckily there were quite a few of when Bill and I took a big trip around England with my parents and 1 year old Harlowe. We found the location where we had stopped then to take some photos, and I was able to stand alongside my dad again. He loved that trip, and he loved seeing so many new parts of England he had only heard about, as well as sharing some of his favorite places with us. I stepped into the place where he had stood for quite awhile, where he had smiled, next to the wall, leaning on it casually. And he was with there with me. My heart broke and soared in equal measure.
The second half was a left turn off the wall heading northeast, and into the boggy moors. Again. Fortunately, this time the bogs and mud were broken up by plantations of evergreen trees. Miles and miles of spruce that provide resources to the paper and furniture industries, as well as plays the important role in carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change and supports biodiversity in local animal life. Wonderful things, and the forests were much easier to walk through, but still I preferred the first half of the day. The bogs wore us down and when there was a small bridge over a particularly deep part we took the opportunity to sit down for a snack. I also took the opportunity to get my feet up.
We had arranged a taxi to pick us up at one of the rare places where the Pennine Way crosses a road up here in the Border lands. Today was scheduled to be very short and tomorrow very long, so we figured out a way to walk further to make them more even. It was a looooooong wait though, and we began to doubt the taxi company was sending someone, but all was well when the car finally pulled up. The driver seemed a bit baffled by us just hanging out in the middle of nowhere. We’ll take a taxi back to where we left off tomorrow.
