August 5, 1979: Twice Brewed to Bellingham
Hadrian’s Wall reaches Peel Crags.
In August of 1979, during the first few weeks of a year-long sabbatical in England, I next attempted to complete the northern portion of the Pennine Way.
I had brought all of my hiking gear with me from the States – including my boots and knapsack – but there was one item which needed immediate replacement… my compass, which I found in pieces as I did my packing on the night of August 3rd. Naturally this discovery threw me into a panic, since I did not want to leave without such an important piece of equipment and since I did not know whether I would be able to get another one before my train left from Kings Cross the following morning at 10:00. I practically threw up – I was so upset – and Dorothy again questioned my sanity. “These trips always make you sick,” she said, and I had no answer beyond the suggestion that I do these things because I am, at least, able to do them.
Anyway, I did get some sleep, though I got up at 7:00 or so, leaving the flat at 6B Steele’s Road at 8:00 and heading toward the West End on the Northern Line. I made an excellent connection and was soon marching up and down Charing Cross Road, my knapsack on my back, trying to figure out the opening hours of the local camping outfitters. Some appeared to open at 9:00, still some time away. I walked up to one store on Oxford Street, scheduled to open at 9:15, and then back to Leicester Square again to stand outside the still locked doors of another supplier. I must say the West End was all but deserted at this hour, a rather eerie sensation. People are needed to cover up all the filth strewn about on the pavements.
When the camping store opened I was informed they sold no compasses but I was directed to a store I knew on the Haymarket. Before I reached it I passed another shop on the corner of Coventry Street and saw a compass in the window. So by 9:10 I had made my purchase (paying £1.55) and had re-entered the underground at Piccadilly. A short ride got me to Kings Cross in very good time after all. I phoned Dorothy to reassure her about the compass, and had time to drink a glass of grapefruit juice (I was parched from all the dashing about), and to buy a candy bar and some reading material: a book of Roald Dahl short stories, and three newspapers, a Sun, a Mirror, and a Telegraph.
I had a reserved seat next to a window, facing a little old lady from Newcastle, but I was trapped into my corner by a young couple from Sicily who soon arrived to take up the remaining seats. The problem of where to put my booted feet was never solved and for three hours I sat scrunched up in a drafty corner. I read one and a half tabloids. When we were disembarked at Newcastle I discovered that I had muscle aches above the knees of both legs, a result of the cramped posture, the cold, and the tension. I had just a few minutes to reach the needed pay train (already in position as we came into the station), pausing only to take a pee in the gents. A journey of about 45 minutes along the Tyne Valley brought me to Hexham, where I had an hour or so to wait for a bus. To this point I was mostly backtracking on the route I had taken to London the previous year, but this time I decided to walk from the railroad station into Hexham proper. In a few minutes I was at the bus station and had discovered where my bus would depart. I bought some peanut brittle and an orange drink, wrote some postcards and watched the locals queue for their buses. The weather was gradually improving and the sun was coming out.
At 3:00 the Hadrian’s Wall bus took off with me and two other passengers. It was fun to redo some of the Military Road, which I had traveled in my rent-a-car five years earlier. Gradually we approached Once Brewed and I disembarked at 3:40 at the Information Centre. Once again I was in position for another assault on the Pennine Way.
I found Mrs. Telford and she showed me to my room at the Twice Brewed Inn – next door to the one I had occupied a year earlier. I changed out of my boots and put on my Adidas. I intended only to walk over to the Information Centre (where I had a look round and bought some more postcards), but it was such a beautiful, warm, fragrant and clear afternoon that I decided to walk up again to the Wall and check on the route for the following morning. This I did at a leisurely stroll.
Back at the Inn I met a nice family in the lounge at the back of the hotel, a large room with a view to the south that included a telephone wire on which all the local birds were perched. Ken sold printing materials to insurance companies and was interested in local politics in a small town near Liverpool. His wife was also very bright and had a nice sense of humor. They had a fifteen year-old son, Ian. They were quite interested in my studies in British popular culture and I talked so much I was almost hoarse. We went to the pub and bought each other drinks and I smoked a cigar. Then we ate dinner at the same table where I had dined with the Hunts, another surrogate family, a year earlier. I remembered the scampi as being better in 1978. It began to grow dark and when the others went for a walk I phoned Dorothy and went up to bed. I had discovered that my Roald Dahl book was just an old collection with a new title, so I left it in the lounge’s bookshelf and took a novel, Rule Britannia, by Daphne Du Maurier. I was reading this when I fell asleep early, enjoying a pretty good night for once.
I arose before 7:00 on Sunday, August 5, for the feet taping and packing ritual. Outside it was grey but there was no moisture as yet and I hoped it wouldn’t come until I had gotten off the slippery crags of Hadrian’s Wall. I had breakfast at 8:30 with my friends again and, after paying Mrs. Telford and saying goodbye to all, hoisted my pack on my back – the curious stares of the entire assembled dining room upon me – and left at exactly 9:00. Once more with feeling. I was prepared for a struggle up the three remaining Wall crags but I found them to be fairly easy. The weather was cool and overcast, an ideal walking climate. Two girls passed me on the way and I encountered Joe and Harry, geriatric walkers whom I was to meet on a number of other occasions. The views from Highshield Crag were quite beautiful. (I was undertaking a much more modest photo pace this year – about one a mile.) In an hour or so I stood at Rapinshaw Gap, facing northward as I had done in 1974, when I had come to this spot from Housteads on the east. Now I was able, as I had once vowed, to stride forward toward the dark forest before me – pausing only at the first stone fence for a drink of water.
I was making excellent time and was slowed only a little at East Stonefolds farm, where, perhaps because I was following some other walkers, I missed an earlier turnoff and ended up at the farm itself. “There must be a road out of here,” one of these lads reasoned, “otherwise they couldn’t live here.” He was right of course and we were soon on route again. This same red-headed logician, seeing the first patch of Wark Forest ahead of is, said grumpily, “Now we have to go through that!” I was prepared to dismiss this anti-Forestry Commission prejudice, so strongly expressed in Wainwright, as Pennine paranoia, but I discovered that there was a genuine basis for the objection. The tall trees on this section were so tightly packed together that one could not see into the forest –all that one could view was an inky blackness right and left.
My concern was with turnoffs in this dense mess, especially since whole portions of the forest had been felled since Wainwright had completed his book twelve years earlier, and nothing was exactly as expected. However flies proved to be the greatest menace on this part of the journey and route finding was not at all difficult. I had a brief rest at the “small isolated walled plantation” between the first two parts of the forest. A large number of walkers, in bright blue, yellow and red, were coming up behind me. No isolation here.
At exactly the halfway point, as I was walking through the middle section of the forest, it started to drizzle. Joe and Harry, who had a faster pace than mine (but who rested more often), came up behind me at this point and Harry opined that he didn’t think it would rain much. I was putting on my rain pants (which meant the boots had to come off first) and adjusting my rain cape. It continued to mist and drizzle the rest of the day. I took advantage of the pause to grab my lunchtime Mars bar, which I munched on the march into the third and final part of the plantation. A number of walkers were lunching beneath the trees at the corner of this turnoff. After climbing out of the Warks Burn valley and going through several farmyards I stopped for a rest in the shelter of some trees on Jenny’s Crag. A couple had claimed another tree and were having trouble keeping some horses from eating their picnic or, alternately, their tent poles. I opened a package of KP peanuts and tried these on one of the horses, who spent a long time trying to sniff them before he took a mouthful.
Wainwright’s Pennine Army near Ash Farm
I was doing very well on time now and knew I’d be arriving too early for the pubs of Bellingham. Nevertheless Joe and Harry outpaced me, though we had one route-finding parley on the Linacres farm road – since they didn’t have their Wainwright handy and I always carried mine in the pouch of my sweatshirt. I failed to find any footbridge over Houxty Burn and, slipping a little on the rocks, put one foot in the stream during my crossing. Soon I was climbing past Shitlington Crag Farm and up through the bracken to Ealingham Rigg.
Bellingham from Ealingham Rigg
There was a huge radio mast here. In front of it, a policeman was parked – reading something intently. I was now able to see Bellingham in the distance but the last two miles were quite dull walking, first a descent on steep grass (more cows to talk to; earlier I had addressed each of them by the number branded on their backsides). Two joggers – a sure sign of approaching civilization – ran down the road to the B6320. There followed a mile on tarmac and pavement and at last I was on the Tyne Bridge, which I had visited the previous August. I arrived in the heart of the village at 4:15, breaking my previous speed total (also set on a sixteen mile day) by five minutes.
For once the telephone kiosk was unoccupied so, with pack still on my back, I called Dorothy and announced my safe arrival. For some reason the machine wanted no coins this time – so I had a free call. Then I plodded on to Roseneath and was welcomed by Mrs. Wright.
I was shown to a new room this time, quite comfortable. There were no other guests, though the children, Graham, in his early twenties, and Nicola, ten or eleven, were about. I had a lovely bath (after getting off all the tape) and waited for dinner at 6:30. After it was consumed I walked into town to mail the daily postcard to Jay and to have a pint at the Black Bull. I smoked a cigar and watched the locals and the hikers from an isolated stool in front of the dead fireplace. A cassocked priest was there and some unlucky driver whose gear shift stick had just come out in his hand. I recognized a few of the walkers but didn’t talk to any of them, leaving after half an hour.
Joe and Harry were just coming into town from their b&b as I left to return to Roseneath. I watched the end of the Onedin Line, an episode followed by the melancholy news that the series’ producer, Cyril Abraham, had died. Then I watched an episode of Tropic (of Ruislip) and retired early again. I was feeling reasonably pleased with my progress, my tempo, and my stamina.
To continue with the next stage of the walk you need: