Simonside Crag

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Apparently the batteries I bought last week for my camera weren't good enough, because yesterday I took one picture before the red battery symbol started flashing. I managed to coax out two more (with the screen off) before it died altogether. Apologies in advance; I did find suitable batteries today, so (hopefully) it won't happen again.

After spending Friday afternoon reading about connectionist models of literacy development and the structure of the thoracic cavity, I decided to give myself a break and take another hike in Northumberland National Park. This time I took a bus to a small town called Rothbury at the park's eastern edge and hiked across some moors, through a forested area, and to the top of a crag called Simonside.

Again I used the "Best Walks in Northumberland" book as a guide. It's really useful, with detailed descriptions and clear maps for each walk.

Rothbury is very typical of the small northern-English towns I've seen: narrow, winding streets, gray stone houses smushed together, a beautiful old church and a pub on every street... etc.

I've mentioned the "we're-going-to-crash-into-everything" feeling you get riding a bus through one of these towns. The feeling intensifies ten-fold when you're on the top floor of a double-decker. You have a fantastic view of the countryside, but going through civilization makes you feel like a villain in a Transformers movie.
The first part of the walk crossed a couple miles of farmland.



The public footpath system is really extensive in Britain, with well-marked trails crossing moors, fields and sheep pastures. I spent about half of this first section dodging poop and the other half feeling like a trespasser. At one point I actually emerged in someone's back yard, having to pass between a garden and some farm equipment and walk down their driveway to get to the road. I was worried I'd lost the path, but a woman in the garden waved to me as if people went through there all the time. So I walked around the chickens, let the tractor go first and continued on my way.

After the farmland, the path climbed up and over some of the moors that make this area of Britain famous.



That brown brush you see is heather, just past its peak. The moors are covered in it, and standing between these bare, rounded hills with that stretched all around you is an amazing sight.



The hills in the background are the Cheviots, on the Scottish border. They were the backdrop for the majority of the walk.

The walk climbed through a forest and emerged just below Simonside Crag. The heather grew so close to the path, it felt like I was wading in it.

Think of the cliffs by Hadrian's wall, only not as wide and with fields of heather in front of them. That's Simonside. The footpath to the summit became hands-and-feet about halfway up. The view of NNP and the Cheviots was spectacular, and I'm really sorry my cheap batteries wouldn't let me share that.

The footpath crossed a golf course on the way back to Rothbury ('BE AWARE OF FLYING GOLF BALLS' said the sign), and I realized it was possibly the first time I've been on a golf course that didn't have little windmills or pachinko-style ramps or children with brightly colored clubs. I noted that it was (almost) as foreign to me as everything else.

Apparently every tee is on a platform and has a map beside it. Makes sense.

After that it was back home to continue the saga of Figuring out How my Oven Works.

Here in the UK, stoves and ovens run on gas. Fair enough, I've rarely had to use a stove that doesn't. But over here, instead of automatically clicking when you turn the gas on, the stovetops have separate buttons that you press (1-2 times if you're most people, 3-4 if you're me) to light it. I can do that, too. Using the tips of my fingers, standing as far back as I can, turning my head and thinking, It's gunna get my eyebrows this time, I just know it! but successful all the same.

The oven, on the other hand, has no indication how we're supposed to work it. Do I push the knob? Turn it? Push and turn? Wait for the heat to start? Use the clicker button? Reach in and - like the stereotype for ovens on the European continent - light it by hand?

If the last one turns out to be the case, I tell you right now I will be boiling, frying or microwaving my food for the rest of this year. No. Thank you.

You would think the University, with all its 'FIRE SAFETY!!!!' signs, could have some kind of instruction somewhere for people who aren't used to manually-lit gas stoves (read: non-Europeans, meaning everyone in international housing).

My flatmates can't figure it out either. Nor could my course mate (and she's English!). The trouble with trying to work it out is that we have no way of knowing when we are or aren't releasing natural gas into the kitchen. I don't particularly want to stand for five minutes with the gas on before I finally figure out how to light it, only to take the whole house down with me.

Because I'm pretty sure they'd charge me for that.

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