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5/18 - 7 miles
Our holiday began with our overnight flight to first Paris and then Newcastle, UK via Air France. We were so pleased when boarding just how wide and comfortable the seats were. The plane was almost double insulated which made it so quiet, eliminating almost all air noise. Great right? Actually not so much! No air noise meant you could hear everything from a passenger perspective, and for an overnight flight we had some noisy neighbors! It almost felt like half of the plane stayed awake the entire night with lights on, etc. Matt was the only one who favored well as Jen didn't sleep one wink, and I feel like maybe I got a cumulative 1.5-2 hours. So we arrived in Paris a bit weary eyed for our short layover but managed to find a Starbucks that made everything feel better! Flight two was on a little puddle jumper and all three of us konked out for the hour flight to Newcastle.
We caught a cab to our B&B in South Shield, dropped our bags and geared up for our first leg of walking. This is where I should mention that although we are here
to walk the Hadrian's Wall National Trail, it actually begins in a town called Wallsend about 7 miles west of the North Sea. We wanted our experience to be an England coast-to-coast, where we could put our feet in the sand on the East and West sides of the country. And so began our 7 mile "warm up."
The beach was just a short distance from our inn and was very reminiscent of the Nantucket beaches with hills of sand, wooden fences, and grasses; that is until you looked farther out where the rocky cliffs and remnants of a Roman fort lined the sea. The walk to Wallsend and the start of the trail at Segedunum Fort took us along major highways and through neighborhoods. Of course in classic English style, a rainstorm passed through which we expect daily at this point.
We pounded the pavement for our 7 miles before reaching the fort, getting our first trail passport stamp (Yay!). We arrived too late to check out the museum, so we caught a cab back to the inn where luckily across the street was a very renowned Fish & Chip restaurant called Colmans where Matt & shared
some of the best we've had, and Jen got a British fried mash-up of cheese and potatoes. After dinner, we visited a pub where we enjoyed some Newcastle Brown beers, because you can't visit Newcastle without enjoying a Newcastle! I must mention beer is insanely cheap here with each running 2.50-3.50 pounds. A round for us is a little more than one craft beer at home.
5/19 - 17 miles
We woke this morning to grey skies and drizzle, and looking at the weather it appeared that we were in for a day of rain. After breakfast, we took a taxi to back to Segedunum Fort to officially begin the walk along the national trail with Bowness-on-Solway on the Irish Sea as our final destination. Hadrian’s Wall dates back about 2000 years ago to the days of the emperor Hadrian. Hadrian ordered the construction of his wall in 122 AD, ‘to separate the Romans from the barbarians’. It stretched in its heyday from coast to coast, with a pair of turrets and a ‘castle’ or small fort every mile.
Today was about 95% urban walking, with a long haul being getting out of Newcastle and the
surrounding burbs. The urban parts started out very interesting with us seeing in the first 30 minutes: a horse tied up in a yard in the middle of a neighborhood, Scabbers the rat from Harry Potter running ahead of us, and lots of litter and graffiti. From there we started to hit the heart of Newcastle and walk along the River Tyne. Newcastle felt like a great cool city, with us passing 7 bridges as we made our way out of the city limits. We also walked through the back of a school yard where we literally saw a group of 10 year old boys in their school uniforms all "smokin in the boys room." Matt & I thought one of them looked like Neville Longbottom!!!
We'd been walking for a good 3-4 hours before we began to discover that our numbers just weren't adding up. We knew we were in for a 15 mile day, with Heddon-on-Wall as our overnight destination but all of our fitness tracking devices (4 different between the 3 of us) were showing way more miles than it felt like we had left. So out came the guide book and the conversations around "no
way, we haven't walked that far..." Well ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you that step trackers are lies!!! They've led us to believe all this time that we've been traveling more miles and have more stamina than we do. LIES!! Their mileage definitely doesn't align with geographical mileage!
Matt & Jen brought sneakers with them and I decided why bring an extra pair of shoes that I would only wear 2 days, so I wore my hiking sneakers thinking it was just flat and long. Well, long story short my feet began to break down pretty quickly with multiple stops to bandage as a multitude of blisters formed. Meanwhile, the place that was pinned as good for lunch and also a brewery ended up being 5 hours into the journey vs. 3 hours like I thought our guidebook showed us. We arrived late afternoon and the food ended up being awful and the beer well, not do great. BOOOOO. We trudged on...
Shortly after lunch we were rewarded with the English Countryside. FINALLY! Hadrian's Path took it's turn and it was fields, flowers, and forests! It was a nice walk and then we began to
climb into Heddon-on-Wall, a serious climb but the reward was seeing the first chunk of wall. We reached the village which was our final destination based on address. Oh wait....no.....your inn is actually another 2 miles from here. What??? This equated to a slight mental/physical break on my part......So ya, anyway, we walked that 2 miles. Can't say I didn't shed a tear or two of pain, but when we arrived the innkeeper was lovely until she took one look at me and told me I looked "shattered." I won't argue, 17 miles with blisters and feet screaming I was!
Did I mention one of the best parts about this trip is the baggage service that moves our big bags everyday from hotel to hotel?? Well if I haven't, it's wonderful in allowing us to only carry day packs on this hike. So after checking in to Ironside Farm (a literal farm run by grandma) we caught a cab to the local pub, The Swan (aka the only restaurant in town) for dinner and it was AMAZING. Can we mention here how we love that every garnish here is Pea Shoots?!?! Makes me wish parsley was dead in the
US but what'cha gonna do?? Anyway, it was the perfect ending to our night after a heck of a long day! We hobbled back to our taxi to the inn.
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