Day 1: Bowness to Carlisie

So here is the official blog/journal/story of our walk from coast to coast. I had intended to make and update this day by day but factoring in the long energy consuming days and an absence of wifi for two days it was an impractical, near impossible way of doing it. So that didn't work out, I'm now retrofitting each day as I ended up doing to the London To Paris bike ride a little while back. Which you can find here if it's of interest.

(This will be compiled off notes myself and mum made and a load of photos, with a slide show on the way including even more.)

 I met mum, dad and morph on the train to Newcastle on Friday August 19th, they hoped on board at Durham and we changed in Newcastle for the train to Carlisle. The train route gave some insight into the journey we'd be taking, as we would pass by the train line from time to time on our walk. 

I don't think I was as well prepared as I could be, and certainly would plan a little smarter before doing something like this again, but even so my schedule the week leading up to this wasn't ideal, with a huge music festival e previous weekend in the baking hot sun, to a quick scramble at home to cat sit at a friends house then get myself ready to head up north will all my stuff. Overal a week of general scrambling, sleep deprivation, intoxication, packing unpacking and packing again without a solid days pit stop in between. I say this now because on the train Up I was still feeling a little disoriented and nasious, and it might have left a little knock on effect that culminated on me a few days into the walk. Although that wasn't the soul cause of problems later on. 

We left our Carlisie BnB early Saturday morning (20th), getting the bus to Bowness on the west coast where the Hadrains walk starts. (Or for many people we saw:) finishes.

The rout starts across a rivers estuary from Scotland which I believe was the closest we'd get the the board during the whole route. That wall must have worked a treat in its hay day then. Seems very odd how the present day Scottish boarder is laid out, but the wall would need shifting north quite a bit if it was put back into service today. For those who don't know about Hadrians wall, you'd best look it up because we didn't have much time to take in the historic information on display. But in a nutshell Hadrian was kind of like Roman England's answer to Donald Trump, some point or other the Romans gave up trying to invade Scotland so this guy said we're going to build a wall and made good on his promis. I suppose ironically Trump has Scotish heratidge so it could have gone the other way around but anyway, Scotland's a cold place and Roman soldiers wore dresses, so it was never going to work out, a wall had to go up. Come to think of it Scots wore dresses to so there we are. Rome is bloody warm, and how many Italians do you know emergate to Scotland? Exactly. 

I'm sure there was some big Mel Gibson style scuffles with the arses and face paint to. Anyway, the fact is now Tourism keeps what's left of the wall safe for many years, but in terms of the walls functionality, English Heratidge could save a fortune on the walls upkeep if the SNP pulls another referendum out. 

Early on walking we saw a sign post with distances to a number of far away destinations, and a man sat oppostie in an old garage who offered to update the sign for us and asked where we where from, this obviously keeps him fairly busy with all the walkers who travel from all over the world to do this walk. He seemed to have a good gauge for geography and managed to think up fair decent approximations on the spot. For all I know it could be spot on, a note to self to check online.

It was quite a wet day, heavy showers on briefly but consistently wet enough to warrant waterproof trousers, which I hadn't worn. they have there pros and cons unless your wearing really good ones. But anyway more than enough rain to soak every inch of me long before then end. The estuary was a very flat route, made up of some small villages, and many sheep. The houses all looked very expensive, Carlisle being the closest city, almost an hour by bus but probably quicker in one of the many brand new Mercadies driving about. This days leg was quite road based, more so due to some temporary diversions sign posted from the official route due to flooding probably. We stopped at a nice pub for lunch and I made a slight change of clothes so my torso colour at least have some dryness for the second half. Carlisle was our end point for day one, with a stamping post at the leisure centre down the road from our BnB.

There's also this stamping system you can do, there's this little Hardrains walk fold out bit of card mapping the route with a bunch of checkpoints you can stamp accordingly as you pass them. It can be quite a good moral booster after a long trek as an easy way of visually marking your progress. And it adds an extra sense of legitimacy to show that you did it. (I leave an image on the last days entry)

 I defiantly should have worn thicker socks as my boots, by the time we approached the outskirts of Carlisie I'd got a couple of blisters where the tops of the boots rubbed. Some plasters and painkiller  made do though. It's just as well I didn't wear the boots again until the final day. So yeah, bring thick socks, and blister stickers! We came into Carlsie gradually by the river, all woodland up into a park near the city centre. But it ended up taking some trespassing to get there. My feet hurt a fair bit by now and wasn't remotely keep to take yet another path diversion signposted. So we took the risk and headed by the original path route to see how it went. It went ok, we passed around what we assumed was the case of the diversion which was a fence of section of path that had eroded towards the rivers edge.

We continued on passing allot of derelict buildings to our right, getting a peculiar feeling of the place. I clocked to men fishing the other side of the river, and some others guys with fishing gear walking our direction, the thought was to ask them for some directions, then suddenly we passed a police woman on our left, her back to us facing the river while speaking on her phone. Soon after two fishermen passed by us with a bit of distance, possibly aware of the police officer but just generally didn't seem they wanted to be seen. 

We ended up in the corner of a large sports field and fortunately being a city I was able to check google maps and find our route through. But after walking past some empty sports facility buildings possibly under refurbishment, we crossed a bridge with a large gated fence standing between us and the last mile of our days route. After a moment I looked at a gap in between the bridge structure and the fence and though about climbing through it. Not an ideal option but given e huge diversion we'd have to make otherwise it was best when we where so close, and evidently had already been trespassing anyway. The gate was clearly there to stop people getting in to were we where, where as we needed to get out. I climbed through easily enough, then mum passed me morph which was the trickiest bit. But it worked, mum then passed the bags over and followed. Just a few moments after we were all through and continued walking a police car drove up the empty road beside us, kept moving round and headed back where it came from. Great timing, a few moments earlier when we scrambled past a no go zone and that wouldn't have gone ideally. 

The last bit was a welcome change of terrain, just a straight path through a large park and a walkway under the road to the leisure/theartre. And an extra 10 or so minutes waiting in reception to get the maps stamped. The cafe there was closed so we waited behind someone amending some sort of gym membership until the receptionist called the duty manager down to unlock the cafe where said stamp was. Done! A short walk up the road to the BnB we'd stayed the night before with a good dinner and solid nights sleep to enjoy. A wet day but relatively manageable and mostly flat terrain. 

Intro

thought I'd take advantage of the 15 minutes of free wifi on the train up north to get this blog started. 

(So long as I can upload them,) I'll make daily updates on our journey, this afternoon I'm meeting mum and dad on the train and changing at Newcastle to get to the west coast where we'll be starting in the morning.