Weather: Fine.
Distance:
25 km (15.5 miles) Total Distance: 3199 miles
Wallsend B&B was the best B&B I've have stayed in on
the trip and was definitely under-priced at £22 per night for this 4 star
accommodation. Patsy’s breakfast was a
real treat – melon to start with and an enormous fry full of good quality
ingredients.
I shared a table with a
young American couple from Rayleigh, North Carolina. His name was Scott – I
don’t know why I had to ask him where he was from – it was pretty obvious. They were on a 10 day whistle stop tour of
England and Scotland with a day o two in Paris thrown in for good
measures. They had ended up in this far
flung desolate part of the world because they had booked it on the internet – I
guess you can not see the contour lines when you book on the internet and don’t
realise that where you should be as a tourist is some forty miles south in the
Lake District. They were on their way
from Bath to Holy Island and I guess therefore were on the wrong side of the
country too.
The weather looked very much like it was going to rain and
sure enough when I stepped out into the open it started. I donned my waterproofs but had only just put
them on when it stopped again and stayed dry for the rest of the day.
Today was going to be all road walking so I
wore trainers rather than boots. I
headed out west along a road that went to nowhere other than looped around an
area I later was told was called the Island.
I could tell it was going to be a quiet walk when I saw a gate across
the road! Cows lined the sides of the
roads in places as they had the previous day.
As it was such a late summer the birds were still singing loud.
I plodded on for mile after mile without stopping, there
being nowhere sensible to stop added to the fact that I wanted to get to a pub
to watch Ireland play Spain in the second round of the World Cup. Once the road headed south I stated to pass a
radio listening station. I passed a
recent memorial to someone who had died, I guessed from a road accident
judging by the gap in the fence at the same place. I chatted to a man walking his dog who told
me about where I was heading and then once I got into Anthorne the roads got a
little busier and boys and their dads were out playing football on the local
playing fields.
I reckoned that if I carried on without stopping I could get
to Newton Arlosh may be without missing too much of the football. I cracked on which wasn’t too difficult as it
was as flat as a pancake for most of the time.
The road got ominously quiet again which concerned me from a hitchhiking
point of view. I got to the village dead
on 12.20 KO time. The pub looked great
from the outside but was dead quiet – no cars in the car park – only a
decorators van! 'Closed for Refurbishment' would have been a good sign to put on the outside rather than leave me trying
all the locked doors!
I sat down, had a chocolate bar and a drink of water and
headed out of the village looking mournfully through the windows of houses
where people were watching the match in the feint hope of being asked in to
join them.
The road swung inland but I carried on along a track to a
farm where even the dogs normally guarding such premises appeared to be absent
– presumably watching the football. Once
again I was listening on my son's mini-radio and the walking passed quickly. Passing over a disused railway bridge I
rejoined the main (huh!) road and entered Abbey Town some 15 minutes
later.
The thought of tracking down the
abbey and reading its history never entered my mind and I desperately tried to
find the village pub. Packed to the
rafter it wasn’t! There were about ten
people in it – only one other man watching the match and drinking bottled
Guinness – the others playing pool and appearing oblivious to the fact that
they kept standing in the way of the telly.
It was a disappointing match that went into extra time and then
penalties. Ireland had the best chances
but even the never seemed all that threatening.
I knew once it came to penalties it would all be over – the Irish not being
very confident in that department.
I was pretty relaxed
about getting a lift back to Bowness when I left the pub, even though it was a
very remote corner of the country. I think it must have been the couple of
pints of Guinness. I had to walk for
about 20 minutes to get the first lift.
It had just started to rain and I had taken to sheltering under a tree
on the opposite side of the road to the direction I wanted to go in so every
time I saw a car coming I dashed across the road. A lady popped out of the farmhouse I was
outside I think to make sure I wasn’t some sort of weirdo playing chicken with
the traffic. A man stopped on his way
home from being called into work at the flourmill in Siloth. He took me as far a Kirkbride and appologised
for not being able to take me to Bowness but he had to dash home to give the
car to his wife. It wasn’t long after I
got a lift with an elderly couple who were out for a Sunday drive and took me
all the way to Bowness – the long way around the coast – the way I had walked –
I think they were testing me out to make sure that my story was true about
having walked that way!
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