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Thursday 15 May - After starting breakfast at 8am, we were still talking and laughing with the very friendly owner of the B&B an hour later. We left the table to make way for the other guests who were due for their breakfast at 9am. During breakfast the owner had advised that she worked for a company that sold professional artist pastels - Malcolm being a keen artist decided he would like to buy a set of her pastels. The B&B lady said she would accept no charge for the pastels as long as he donated the money to the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust and gave her a picture showing one of his favourite scenes whilst hiking the Pennine Way to put up in her office. Malcolm agreed to do this - we are very grateful to Crofters End B&B for their donation to the charity.
We decided it would be lovely to have freshly made sandwiches for the day's hike, and so went to an internet cafe IT Bites, which did great sandwiches and scones. The owner of IT Bites agreed that we could place one of our leaflets on his noticeboard - so we are very grateful to him
for this. With all of our lunch time goodies, we headed out again along the Pennine Way. However, we had heard about a beautiful waterfall at a place called Hareshaw Linn and decided to take an adventurous detour off the Pennine Way. In Greenhead we had met a photographer and writer for a Northumbria Country magazine and he had recommended that it was worth the extra time and effort taking a detour off the Pennine Way and going to see the waterfall. The waterfall was beautiful and very refreshing after being in the warmth of the sun. We met a lovely couple from Cumbria at the waterfall, and spent sometime discussing the Lake District (one of our favourite hiking destinations) and listened to how they used to take their children as babies and young children walking around the Lakes - we still hope to fulfill our dream one day, when we will be able to share our love of the outdoors with our children too. After discussing our fundraising hike, the couple said that they were aware of someone who had also suffered an ectopic pregnancy and very kindly donated towards the charity. With time passing quickly, we said our
thanks and goodbyes to the couple and headed back to the Pennine Way - it was a long morning and we didn't actually reach the Pennine Way until 12:15pm, already feeling peckish. We decided to press on and eat our lunch later on.
After the highlight of the waterfall, we spent a couple of hours walking over wilderness that seemed to go on and on - however every now and then it was interesting to see stones bearing the letters GH - initially we couldn't work out what this meant, but found out that the stones set the boundary for the residence of Gabriel Hall, the once High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1705. Once the wilderness eventually came to an end, we were back to the forest - lots and lots of endless forest! In fact for the majority of the 15 mile hike, we walked through endless forest. We were lucky to spot a gracefully bounding deer, which helped to break up the monotony of the never ending forest. Even one of our Pennine Way books by Tony Hopkins says, 'most walkers feel a sense of foreboding at this point'...and there should be a notice saying, 'All hope
abandon, ye who enter here'. However, no sooner had our relief of breaking out of the endless forest come, we then reached a 'never' ending undulating grey tarmac road. We also had to make our way steeply uphill over rocky ground, through squelchy bog which turned our boots bright orange!
We passed Blakehopeburnhaugh, which has apparently appeared in the Guinness Book of Records for several years as the longest place name in England - although about quarter of a mile further on there is a place called Cottonshopeburnfoot - so perhaps this will be a new contender for the longest place name in England. It was a major relief to reach the stunning Kielder Forest and follow the River Rede into Byrness.
Unfortunately we were not greeted with open arms at the youth hostel where we were staying the night, but with a rant asking us where we had been! They had assumed we had left Bellingham at 9am (we started on the Pennine Way at 12.15pm) and because we had not arrived by 7.30pm they decided to call two different police units (including the Northumbria Police) and Mountain Rescue!! We couldn't believe it, in all of our
nine years of hiking together across the world Mountain Rescue has never been called, together with two different police units - we really were in shock! It was still daylight and the area was not at all mountainous - we were very grateful that they had shown so much concern, but given that our mobile phone numbers were clearly written on our bags that had been delivered to the youth hostel earlier in the day, we did ask that maybe next time they simply call our mobile phone numbers rather than causing so much unnecessary alarm. All three of us had mobile phone reception all day, so a quick phone call to one of us on our mobile phones would have been much more sensible than calling every police force in the locality, on top of Mountain Rescue...such a waste of Mountain Rescue's precious time and resources. Never mind.
During dinner we had the opportunity to catch up with Nick again and introduce him to Malcolm. Nick is hiking the Pennine Way there and back. We spent some time talking before retiring to bed.
Only 30 miles to go!
If you would like to donate towards our
fundraising hike, please go to www.ectopic.org.uk/fundraising/?p=46 . Thank you very much for your support and messages. Lavinia and Steve.
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