Out and about

We seem to have settled into a travel routine that’s not too rushed and not too settled. A week in a town and we move on. In some places this has been a little short, like in Paris (one always needs more time in Paris) and the Lake District, where a month wouldn’t be enough, but nowhere yet too long – not for us anyway. We generally breakfast at home from locally purchased groceries, packed sandwich picnic or pub for lunch and cook at home or dine out, depending on what we did for lunch. It all seems to be working pretty well. It gives us time to wash (clothes obviously, we sometimes wash ourselves more than weekly), shop, and get to know the places a little better plus, for six months, even weekly stays add up to 26 mobilisations. More than that, I think is less ‘holiday’ and more ‘special military operations’.

Finding time to reflect on the day is a routine I haven’t yet nailed on this trip, and as a consequence, I’m somewhat behind (again).

Last Friday, the 20th, it felt like spring had sprung as we coffeed in our little cottage garden at Baycliff. Sparrows fluttered in the shooting thicket, flowers turned their faces to the gentle morning sun, and we tarried awhile, all packed and ready to go, to enjoy the still and quiet of this lovely place. In 45 minutes, we were on the car ferry at Bowness-on-Windermere, headed for Far Sawrey.

We parked along the shore and enjoyed a lovely walk along the water’s edge almost to Wray Castle. The sun was shining, water lapped the pebbled, tree-lined beaches, and boats bobbed gently on the lake. On the far bank, grand stone manor houses commanded stunning views across green fields to the lake.

As we drove off after the walk, we pulled over on the single lane road to allow an improbable cavalcade of Mercedes and Audis pass, each with a cohort of four black muscle-shirted, sombre-looking young men of Middle Eastern persuasion, windows open and stereo vomiting out doof, doof, f..k yeh stye rap. With all eyes straight ahead, only the driver, about six inches from my face (we almost had to fold our wing mirrors to pass) turns and says “thanks brov”, and the procession slowly passes. I’m still trying to picture them going for a lovely walk along the lake, perhaps stopping for a wee picnic?

The drive from Far Sawrey, by Esthwaite Water through Hill Top, Hawkeshead, Outgate and Brathay on the way North to Blencathra and finally West to Haltwhistle is heartachingly beautiful, every bend revealing one more impossibly picturesque stone village, complete with its heraldically named Inn, wood fire smoke gently issuing from its idiosyncratic chimney, invariably nestled by a stream forded by a stone bridge. We passed an older couple in a beautifully restored vintage sports car, he in an old leather bomber jacket with lamb’s wool collar and she in scarf and beret – pulling into a small tavern for a sunny afternoon pint. It just worked. Apart from Blencathra, her 868m peak rising 700m abruptly from the town of Threlkeld, marking the start of the northernmost range of the Lake District, it was all ‘A’ road highway scenery to Penrith, then Carlisle, finally arriving in Haltwhistle, on dusk. We dined at the Manor House, watching young drunk girls from a funeral reception ducking in and out a little un-decorously – their enebriated state having apparently lessened the pain of some of the more sombre undertakings of the day.

The next morning, Google advised that it was a one-hour ‘mostly flat’ walk from our Haltwhistle cottage to Hadrian’s wall. The ensuing climb afforded views out of Haltwhistle, and later Hadrian’s Wall, typically absent from ‘mostly flat walks’, and considerable agility was required from us both, diving off the steeply winding narrow roads from oncoming vehicles, and taking refuge behind ‘stay in low gear’ and ‘20% grade’ signs. Later, after our ‘Wall walk’, we inquired at the Milecastle Inn as to alternative routes home (we also inquired about beer). The Haltwhistle ‘Burn’ follows the site of an old railway track that cuts through a gorge dropping from the plains below Hadrian’s wall down into Haltwhistle proper. It is, of course, ‘mostly flat’ and accordingly constituted our significantly more relaxed route home. (To our lasting dismay, the ‘Burn’ track led us quite literally to our back door!)

A couple of days later, our local geography significantly improved, we wandered up the ‘Burn’, a shallow, fast-moving stream cutting through a rocky, wooded gorge. The peaceful place was once a hive of industry producing woollen fabric, coal, stone, lime and ceramics. 600 tons of coal per day were mined here until 1931, ending three hundred years of coal extraction. Ruins from those once busier times are largely gone, some stone fragments and a tower cloaked in forest and undergrowth. It was very pleasant to walk the whole way (2 1/2 miles) from Haltwhistle to Cawfields Quarry (Hadrian’s Wall) off-road through woods and pasture, via the Burn.

Our cottage provided thermos passes equally as a handwarmer – in fact a hand ‘burner’ and we proved previously (after walking through a swamp and picnicing in a farm paddock) that all that heat out means that very quickly, there’s not very much heat left in. Have hot coffee about an hour into your walk or have cold coffee shortly thereafter. We opted for the former and stopped at Cawfields, an old dolerite quarry that now marks the start of one of the best preserved sections of Hadrian’s Wall. Previously, we’d explored the milecastle here and a little of the wall and on this day we headed further east past ‘Sycamore’ pass and the Twice Brewed Inn (in fact, we made it almost to Housesteads, just to the end of Crag Lough).

There’s plenty in the history books on Hadrian’s Wall. Suffice to say here that it’s an incredible structure, incredible that it was manned with ten thousand soldiers for 300 years, astonishing in its vision and symbolism and stunningly beautiful to walk along. I confess I had no idea it was so undulating (up to 345m above sea level at Windshields Crag) or that it ran along a rocky ‘sill’, dropping precipitously to the North, providing further natural defence for the Romans and spectacular scenery for walkers.

By three-ish, after a 9:30 am start and about 8 1/2 miles of upping and downing, we were done and dropped down from the sill to “Twice Brewed” for a couple of ales. We bantered with the bar staff about the difficulties of raising children with social media, and the manager, wearing a “Remember Sycamore Gap” T-Shirt told us the story of Steel Rig, a place nearby. A local long-retired commando, so the story goes, remembers his father stopping along the road and allowing him, as a boy, to run across the paddock to play in the gun turret of a German fighter bomber wreckage shot down during the Second World War. This, apparently, was the steel rig. Incidentally, the “Remember Sychamore Gap” T-Shirt is a reference to a once iconic and recently illegally felled 140-year-old sycamore tree on Hadrian’s Wall. We’d looked on in dismay not long before, with others mourning the tree’s demise. The culprits are in gaol.

This morning it was raining heavily and about three degrees, and we were kind of chuffed that we’d changed our museum day to today based on accuweather – a good day to be inside! The Roman army museum is sensational. It’s not huge, but tells a great story, through various media, of the life of Roman soldiers posted to the wall. Roman soldiers were quite literate, apparently writing in ink on timber cards or etching on wax or stone tablets. Pretty cool. We dined out tonight at the Milecastle Inn, sitting in a cosy little corner by the fire. We also learned why much of the Haltwhistle Burn river banks are reinforced with stone walls. A day of heavy rain has caused the Burn to rise considerably, and the now brown-froth torrent can be heard crashing down the river as we doze off to sleep.

Actually, not dozing quite yet. I missed a day. Somewhere in there, the 22nd, I think, we drove North East roughly two hours to “Holy Island”. Here, they have the equivalent of the Darwin awards for people who think they can race the changing tide. There’s a little refuge hut on stilts about halfway across for those who decide to give it a crack, and a sign at both ends showing a photo of a submerged car with the caption “this could be you”. It certainly helped us think about our arrival and departure times.

Lindisfarne Castle on the island has been a fort since the 1500’s, but in later years was gifted by the crown and became private. In the 1800s it was purchased by Edward Hudson, owner of “Country Life Magazine” and converted into a holiday house. Apparently, he hadn’t reckoned on the conversion of a 400-year-old rock dwelling into a modern holiday home as being expensive and had to let it go. Today it survives, renovated to its full holiday house grandeur, as a national trust attraction. It’s a quirky little place with odd little corridors and stairways designed to navigate its elongated multistoreys clinging atop Beblowe Crag. Notwithstanding, it’s been restored beautifully and the rooms, appointed with original ‘holiday-house’ furniture, together with personal items from the many guests that stayed there, paint a wonderful picture of what a “weekend at Ed’s” must have been like.

Also on the island is the Lindisfarne Priory, established by St Aidan in 634. It’s a ruin now, compliments of a few very naughty Vikings and King Henry VIII, but it’s clear to see it was a sizeable establishment with a church, large kitchen, brew house, bake house, cellars, dormitories, larder, ovens, warming house etc. St. Cuthbert was a monk and Prior there from 670. The discovery of his undecayed remains 11 years after his death greatly increased pilgrimages to Lindisfarne and solidified the island’s reputation for miracles. I suppose living a solitary existence was their intent; even so, it would have been a very desolate and lonely place to be in the 600s.

Bamburgh Castle cuts an impressive silhouette on the south eastern horizon even from far across the bay at Lindisfarne. We learn, arriving there after Lindisfarne, that it was King Oswald of Northumbria, one of the castle’s many inhabitants, who asked St Aidan to establish a monastery at Inisfarne and preach. We also learn that the fifth generation Armstrongs currently living here, descendants of William George Armstrong, who purchased the castle for sixty thousand pounds in 1894, collect some really weird stuff.

Their ancestor and benefactor, however, was a polymath; a scientist, industrialist, horticulturist, designer, businessman and visionary. Today we went to see his house at Cragside – it was astounding. But more on that tomorrow.