Housesteads to Greenhead: Hadrian's Wall

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10 miles

It was pretty funny the evening before when we informed the inn that we would be skipping breakfast and leaving at 7am. Their first reactions were "you're skipping breakfast?" The second was "we'll need to show you how to exit as an alarm will go off before 7:30am." They did offer to make us a packed lunch in lieu of breakfast which was nice, but it's clear that the world here does not operate before the 8am breakfast!

At 7:15 we were downstairs, picked up our lunches and exited through the kitchen with help of the sole employee on duty at that time. We had to make up our mileage from yesterday and set out on the trail heading east. Our destination was Sycamore Gap, which many might recognize from photos or the movie Robin Hood with Kevin Costner. It's where Hadrian's Wall takes a dramatic dip and a beautiful tree has grown at the bottom. It was a little over 1.5mi in, so once we reached it we turned around and headed back west making up for our 2.5-3mi lost yesterday.

We immediately began an extreme steep climb to the highest point on the wall. From there it was a series of huge ups and downs, with the downs being quite rocky. We took our time going down as at this point we can't afford to lose our ankles!! We stopped up at a peak and ate our sandwiches and crisps which were much needed after a morning of just protein bars for breakfast.

We leveled off a tad bit and hit some more farmland where Jen, the sheep whisperer, had a baby lamb run right up to her. Totally adorable! We really thought we were in a home stretch of more level ground as we made our way through farmlands and forests (except climbing over more stiles, yuk!) but we were wrong. Hill after hill appeared with us first going up, up, up and then down, down, down....you might have heard my knee screaming all the way in America!

Finally we were on some level ground and ran right into our inn located in Greenhead for the night. Of course all inns want you to immediately take off your boots at the door but each time we want to say, "Do you know these are sort of attached to our feet at the moment?" Never mind the sounds we make as we put them on every morning, LOL! We all just collapsed for a while to let our feet throbbing die down before we made our way to the pub (the only place to eat). It was unfortunately the worst meal of the trip and not worth the words to type!

However, it is worth mentioning how great all these inns have been with their electric kettles in the room with tea, coffee and biscuits. America take note. But of course there are downsides like no outlets in bathrooms EVER and having to turn every power outlet on (test there's a switch for each outlet). Just some fun fact before we say night night!

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Comments

[Tom Lyle]

The end is near...
Your train is right around the corner.....get ready!