August 11, 1978: Lambley to Twice Brewed

I rose at a very early hour and had another peek outside. It was again sunny. I completed my packing, put on my (by now) dry boots, and took everything out of my room as I descended for breakfast. There were a few travelers about, including the little old lady who was walking her dog. Mr. McGee took my breakfast order at 7:45 and I was finished by 8:00 and, after paying him, I put my pack on my back and marched down the main street of Alston to the bus stop at Henderson’s Garage. The bus soon arrived at the end of its Haltwhistle run and I got on board with everyone else ­– only to have the driver begin his return trip by climbing up the main street itself (right past the Victoria Hotel) before turning around at the fire station – where I could have waited myself.

Pretty soon we were across the bridge and speeding north along yesterday’s route. The driver had agreed to let me off at the exact spot where the PW crossed the B6292 between Lambley and Halton Lea Gate. So at about 8:40 I descended from the bus and headed for a convenient bench, where I put on my muck pants (had to take my boots off to do this) and made other adjustments with hat and canteen. The bus had made its run to Halton Lea Gate and had passed me coming from the other direction before I was ready to depart. I waved to the driver and climbed the stile, which pointed the way in the direction of Lambley Colliery.

Wainwright was useful in route finding this morning as here the PW traverses featureless moorland, gently rolling hills and little valleys, with a few isolated farmsteads thrown in for good measure. There were very few scenic attractions and I would say that this stretch surely qualified as the least appealing territory I had so far traversed.

As I approached High House (barn) I headed slightly off route in order to take a pee against a likely looking tree and, for my troubles, I ended up calf deep in the reeds of a hidden streamlet. Hartley Burn provided a little greenery in an otherwise desolate countryside, but there was a steep climb out of the valley and at the gate above I paused for a sip of water and the removal of my sweatshirt. It was getting hot already and two hikers who came up behind me (surprisingly, the only the genuine PW walkers encountered all day) expressed a desire for rain again. I suppose they felt that such moisture would wash away the flies – who again swarmed about me all day. One hardly wanted to sit down and rest in such an environment and so I doggedly pushed on, mile after mile.

I made my way around Ulpham and Baty’s Shield farms and crossed Kellah Burn, coming at the little footbridge from precisely the angle memorialized in Wainwright’s drawing in the guidebook. The route had been “harvested” recently – along with the rest of the field though which it made its way, but I found the right direction and ascended Round Hill. Things were wet underfoot in the little valley between it and Wain Rigg, which also had to be ascended on the way to Black Hill. The ordnance survey column proved to be a good landmark, but there was considerable ambiguity about the stile to be located 150 yards distant. I climbed over a broken down part of the wall in question, noticing that other hikers were marching straight along its eastern side as I was crossing to the west. I later realized that they were taking a very simple shortcut that must have saved them two thirds of a mile. (It seemed that nobody wanted to complete this stretch of the official route.) Usually I too appreciate a small deviation or two, just to keep the whole thing from becoming unnecessarily compulsive, but today I was, innocently, behaving the part of the Pennine Way purist.

The descent to Gap Shields, which so many had disdained, had to be accomplished without a firm track and I found myself coming down too far to the west. I had to double back over rough ground with no path, and eventually hit the chalet and gate that signaled a turn to the east. The views here were jarring: derelict buildings, electricity pylons and roaring traffic on the A69 – which I would cross in another half hour myself. Part of my route was over the Greenhead Golf Course, from which I could look down on the B6318, the railway cutting, and over to the ruins of Thirlwall Castle. I descended to the Tipalt Burn valley, passed dozens of youth group day-trippers, crossed the burn and, at the start of the first of the Hadrian’s Wall hills, sat down to have a rest – flies and all.

I had picked up almost an hour on my schedule by now and I knew that his would be useful in the more strenuous stretches to come – eight miles of crag walking as I followed the route of the Wall eastward. A flock of sheep were driven up the hill as I rested. I took off my muck pants and stored them in my pack. It was most hot, walking in the noonday sun, and I was trying to ration my water.

I walked along the vallum as I climbed up the hill to the Walltown Quarry, making my way in and out of a large herd of cows. Then came a mile or so of hot tarmac as I headed toward Walltown farm (where Dorothy and I had once had a reservation on our ill-fated 1976 expedition). The path up the hill to Walltown Crags was being used by some picnickers – who seemed surprised when I marched through their resting place.

God, how slowly the miles came now – I really did need forty minutes to complete each one as the route marched up and down as the Way moved east. Neither the OS map nor Wainwright was sufficiently detailed to show all of the deep cuts between the summits, each of which had to be ascended at a most acute angle, like walking up steps. The pack got heavier and the sun hotter. I was getting dehydrated and twice I had attacks of gagging.

Things leveled off a bit as I passed Great Chesters and on the descent to Cawfields I noticed a huge car park full of tourist vehicles, a sight soon accompanied by an even more precious one – an ice cream vendor, who was also selling lukewarm soda pop in cans. Before I could buy two of these I had to wait in line while 32 boy scouts each received a cornet! Then I lay down on a grassy knoll and ate a Mars bar and drank one of the cans – I thought it was going to be lemonade, but the small print told me they had added beer to the recipe (the famous shandy) – gad, what the English like to drink, I thought. It was wet anyway, and after a pee in the john I started up again for Cawfield Crags.

Of course so did all of these trippers. Now I had to contend with toddlers blocking the path. The higher I got the more thin the crowd became. Finally it was only the Germans I had to overtake. The gaps, such as Caw Gap, seemed to increase in number and steepness as the afternoon wore on and my rests got more frequent, as did my stops for water. I was really running out of steam as I reached my last summit, Winshields Crag, which is also (at 1230 feet) the highest point on the Roman wall. The views hereabout were spectacular (as were the flies), but since I had already walked on the wall in 1974 I was no longer quite so enchanted. After a rest near the O.S. column I took me and my blistered feet down the hill to Peel, where I left the PW to search out my evening’s accommodation – at the Twice Brewed Inn – half a mile distant.

I followed a paved road down to its intersection with the Military Road and headed west. The speed of the traffic was dizzying and I had to wait a while to cross safely. I arrived at 4:55, after having completed over fourteen miles, and I was quite weakened and worn out. Just as I was about to introduce myself to the landlady, who was sunning herself near an outdoor table, a woman came up to me and said, “Are you following me or am I following you?” I recognized her, of course, as the woman with the funny glasses who had been a member of the party of three ladies at the Victoria Hotel. She now asked me if I had not also been at the George and Dragon in Garrigill. “Yes,” I said. “Then you must be the American my husband and children reported meeting when they were staying there.” “A girl and three boys?” I asked. “Yes,” she replied, though one of the boys was not her child but the fair Amanda’s boyfriend. While the walkers were marching northwards, the mother, her mother-in-law, and a French friend were proceeding by car – rendezvousing every now and then, and supplying fresh food for the walkers.

I asked them if we couldn’t continue this chat at dinner and entered the inn behind the landlady. I found Twice Brewed to be a huge roadhouse, with over 30 rooms and ten or so showers. My room was tiny and I soon had it covered with the contents of my exploded pack. I went to take a shower, but I would have preferred a bath in which to soak my aching feet. The walls of the place were paper thin and I could overhear the conversation of two lovers in the next room. “I can’t do it.” “Yes you can, Roger.”

Dressed in my blue slacks and Adidas and, for the first time, my red short sleeved shirt, I headed for the pub and the first of two pints. I wrote postcards while drinking the first, smoked a cigar and chatted with some of the other walkers while downing the second. Two of these chaps were working class Londoners, one with no front teeth, and one with a tattoo and a pot belly (“Though not,” he said, patting mine, “as big as yours.”) Their accents baffled the Northumberland barmaid. They were doing the route from north to south, which is why I hadn’t encountered them before this, and they were most amusing.

At 7:00 I went in to have dinner with Anita, her deaf mother-in-law, and Claude. The father, with whom I had chatted at the George and Dragon, was a professor at Southampton University. I really enjoyed some civilized conversation. Anita had been in Chicago for a year while Steven had filled a visiting professorship at the Argonne Laboratory. Claude’s English wasn’t very good and it has hard to tell how much the mother-in-law was hearing. The proprietors wouldn’t let “Timmy” into the inn, but granny prepared a dish of cooked carrots for him and then took this out to the car – where he had to spend the night.

To tell the truth I was almost too tired to eat and soon after dinner came to an end I headed for my room, emerging only once in the middle of the night, to get rid of some beer.

When I got up in the morning I still felt punched out and the prospect of another day of strenuous walking seemed unacceptable. If I had faced less than sixteen miles, if these hadn’t begun with three more miles of wall climbing, if there had been some escape route back to civilization instead of uninhabited wilderness, if it hadn’t been pouring with rain again (making the steep crags slippery), I might have pushed on; if today had been a rest day I might have re-gathered my energies ­– but as none of these things prevailed I decided to bring to an end the walking portion of this trip. Reaching Twice Brewed had been very satisfying emotionally. In my planning for the ill-fated 1974, 1976, and 1977 trips, Twice Brewed had each time been the northern terminus. Now I had made it. I had walked for six days, twice as long as on any previous trip, and had covered mileage equal to the three earlier trips combined. It was for these reasons that I felt only a modicum of regret in abandoning the walk at this point; never before had I packed it in with less self-doubt or recrimination. I had left myself just four days of walking at the northern end of the PW – a nice trip of manageable length for some other year.

I didn’t really want to head for London as yet, however, and I did want to see Bellingham, where I had booked for the next two nights. So at breakfast I asked Anita, who was heading in that direction, if I could have a ride. Timmy’s dog box had to go on the roof, but there was room for me and at about 9:30 we were off. The Hunt family had wanted to visit the Wall today, but in the pouring rain outdoor activities had lost their appeal. Instead they drove straight to Bellingham to do some shopping for the walkers, whom they would see next day in Byrness. I tagged along for a couple of hours in a somewhat stupefied daze, not improved by my ride in the back seat. First we went to the grocery market in Bellingham, then to an antique gallery, then to the information center in the town hall (I got a bus schedule book here). I went to the post office for stamps, postcards and instructions to Roseneath, my b&b, and we all went to the Cheviot Hotel bar for coffee – which was my treat. Here Anita examined all the brochures given to her at the information center and shouted suggestions at her mother-in-law: “Do you want to visit Alnwick Castle?” “Do you want to visit the woollen mills at Otterburn?” None of these seemed to suit so it was decided that they would spend the rest of the day (in which the rain showed no signs of letting up) reading books in the lobby of the Byrness Hotel. As we had been walking through the sodden street of Bellingham, Anita had been looking for any sign of her walkers, who were scheduled to pass this way today, but now she seemed ready to push on. I got my stuff out of her car and said goodbye and thank you to all of them.

Then, as it was past the noon hour, I headed for the Rose & Crown, where I had a whiskey, wrote some last postcards, and looked at the cartoon on the wall about the World’s First Test Tube Duck. The postcards included three to the proprietors whose establishments I would not reach this trip: reaching even 70% of my bookings was also a new record. I had a second whisky and then went to a cafe for lunch, having eggs, chips, peas and a Pepsi. By this time it was 1:30 so I made an attempt to find the home of the Wrights, but no one was at home, so I had to walk back into town in the rain again and here I met Dr. Hunt and the bright-eyed Amanda, telling them briefly about my time spent with their family before they headed into my lunchtime cafe and I entered the Black Bull, where I had a pint of lager. In the George & Dragon in Garrigill there appears a drawing of the town fool, but he was here in person at the Black Bull, sitting with some bemused friends at the next table, getting pissed at noon and hoping the rain would continue so he wouldn’t have to gather hay tomorrow. There was a jukebox in the Black Bull but the records were quite another selection than that on offer in the Turk’s Head. Patti Smiths’ “The Night Belongs to Lovers” seemed to be the local favorite and I heard no more of the Brown Girl, let alone Old Shep.

I tried Roseneath again and this time roused Mr. Wright, who said, “Ah, I was just making your bed.” Since the room wasn’t quite ready he showed me to the guest’s sitting room, where I sat for a few minutes in the cold, watching cricket on the TV. Then I had a nice bath and actually dozed off a bit before dinner. The food was well-prepared here, and served by Mrs. Wright herself. There were only two other guests – schoolmarms in their thirties from Birmingham. They had Old Maid written all over them, but they were nice and we chatted back and forth during the meal. I believe I turned on the floor heater in the sitting room and watched a little telly, while sheep in the adjoining field kept popping their faces over the garden wall. I went to bed pretty early – the all-day rain still coming down.

The schoolmarms were off to see the seals off the Northumberland coast soon after breakfast on the morning of Sunday, August 13. I decided to have another look around Bellingham. This was easier than yesterday since it was no longer raining. It wasn’t exactly sunny either, but there were bright intervals. I walked past the town police station (with resident Westie), the shops, and the pubs and crossed the bridge over the North Tyne, which seemed to be a wide and deep river hereabouts. There were many other Sunday walkers and dogs nearby and two people got into a rubber boat and gave one another contradictory and ill-tempered instructions on how to row against the current. One of the dogs went swimming,

I saw a lot of parked cars next to a field that looked like it should have been hosting some sort of athletic contest, but most of the drivers were simply going to church. I sat next to the river for a while, noticed my watch had stopped, got it going again, and saw that it was now after 12:00 and the pubs would be open. Outside the Black Bull a station wagon, with no attendant, offered a wide variety of Sunday papers from its boot, and I left money for a Telegraph and a Mirror before going into the pub. There I spent a leisurely two hours, reading, eating some crisps, and downing two pints.

After visiting the loo I headed for Hareshaw Linn, the stream I had crossed so many times on the way to my b&b. There is a recommended diversion from the PW described by Wainwright that leads up the Linn two miles to a waterfall. Wainwright mentions a brochure describing the flora of this nature trail but at the information center the day before a young girl had said that they had taken down all the identifying numbers – so it wasn’t a nature trail anymore. Well, even without the numbers I now set off to complete the four mile circuit, but no sooner had I started up the lovely wooded valley than I was attacked by a violent seizure of itching (and scratching) of unexplained origins – as those two pints rose to the surface and attempted, perhaps, to escape through the pores. It was most unpleasant, but the walk was nice enough, though it was almost too dark beneath the wooded canopy for proper photography.

Many other Sunday strollers were encountered, including quite a few who were wearing only street shoes – soon covered with mud. I didn’t stay long at the falls, but set off down the valley again, emerging at Bellingham in the middle of picnickers and golfers. I went into town again and waited in line for the teenagers to get off the telephone and made the first of several unsuccessful calls to London – in search of my mother-in-law. Then I returned to Roseneath, cleaned up a bit, and watched the news on the telly until dinner – which was excellent.

The schoolmarms had just returned from their travels and gave me a running commentary on what they had seen. After dinner we watched some more TV – last night we had all been too tired to find out how they got rid of “Them.” Tonight we watched a J.M. Barrie play and, alone, I watched Larry Foster, whom I had known in Los Angeles, conduct the Jeunesse Musicale in Bartok’s Concerto For Orchestra. Just before going to bed I reached Anne, and gave her my London arrival time.

I got up early on Monday, August 14, in order to get my pack in shape for travel. No matter how well organized one tries to be, it is still a pain to live out of a pack. I had a nice leisurely breakfast, paid Mrs. Wright, and, at 9:15, I headed for the bus stop in town. It was drizzling again so I put on my rain cape. I was again able to marvel at the British public transportation system. I left Bellingham at 9:30, was in Hexham 45 minutes later, waited briefly for the hourly train to Newcastle, arrived in the latter at about 11:30 and, at a few minutes before noon, I was waiting for “The Flying Scotsman” – which would take me to London by 3:00. I bought some more tabloids while waiting in Newcastle and struck up a conversation with a Jewish kid (in black outfit) who was a student at a Gateshead prep and on his way to Israel and, so he assured me, to Harvard. He was pacing the platform nervously and worrying about his seat on the train, even though he had a reservation. I did not, but found a place all right as we sped south, the weather getting better (now that I was through walking) all the time. I had booked a room at the Tudor Court Hotel at 58 Cromwell Road and from here I had three days in London, crammed with shopping and theater going. On Friday the 18th I returned to Gatwick (with two knapsacks this time) and returned happily home.

To continue with the next stage of the walk you need:

Day 13: Twice Brewed to Bellingham