Hooptedoodle #150 – The Mud of Cumbria

Since it was the Contesse’s birthday last Saturday, and also since we never did get a Summer holiday this year (with one thing and another), we took a weekend break at Wetheral, near Carlisle. I haven’t visited Wetheral for about 15 years, but remember it fondly – it is a quiet village (one gets the impression that this is where the money in Carlisle lives), with interesting walks along the valley of the River Eden and blessed with an excellent, independently owned hotel (The Crown) which has great food and even a nice indoor swimming pool (which we used – my son is a very keen swimmer).

Fancy a little holiday home in a quiet village in the North West, for the weekends?

The original plan, to be honest, had been to visit Durham, but Durham was booked solid – certainly everything within our price range – which may be connected with Freshers’ Week at the university. So it was Wetheral, with possibilities for Hadrian’s Wall visits and even the north end of the Lake District (less likely, given the time available) for a little walking. We got the Autumn Special Deal by phoning the hotel direct, which – interestingly – was about 60% of the best price we obtained for the same accommodation through the better known web-based booking sites. Hmmm.

Saturday we walked down the 99 steps from the railway station to the bank of the River Eden, and walked a few miles upstream. Very pleasant scenery – the river runs almost through a gorge at points, and past a man-made island which the monks put there centuries ago to channel salmon into a trap. There is a spectacular railway viaduct (which also carries a footpath to allow you to get to Great Corby, on the opposite bank), and below Corby Castle (which is mostly Victorian in its present state) there is a very impressive man-made cascade down to the river. It must be a remarkable sight in wet weather.

This walk also renewed my acquaintance with the Mud of Cumbria, which made a big impression on me (or possibly it was the other way round) during my 2012 walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I had not forgotten about it, of course, but time softens the memory.

In September 2012 I developed some private theories that the Romans may have had some idea of exploiting the commercial potential of this very special mud – it is composed of very fine silt; in a field it can be bottomless, even if the surface looks quite firm; an innocent looking puddle will suck your boots off and laugh at you as you fall about in the mire; on a stile or on stone steps it has the exact properties of WD40, even in your best Brasher boots (assuming you still have them, after the puddle). Our exposure to it this weekend was minimal, but even so I managed to get some on the boots as I was walking on some rock shelving at the edge of the river, and I was sliding around like a drunk goat on a frozen pond. Somehow, the mud is different in neighbouring Northumberland – I must check if it changes abruptly at the county line. More study is required, with proper samples and slump tests and all that – and much discussion in pubs. I must give this some thought – anyone fancy a mud sampling weekend based around Cumbrian pubs? We could omit the mud-sampling if it seemed appropriate.

Our trip home on Sunday got off to an early start, to allow us time to have a short walk from the Roman Army Museum near Greenhead, up onto the end of the very best section of the Hadrian’s Wall walk – we did a couple of miles along the top of Walltown Crags, just to give my wife a brief taste of the best of what the Wall offers in scenery and walking/scrambling. We’ve been together to Housesteads a few times, but that is very formalised and park-like compared with the Crags.

Foy the Younger on top of Walltown Crags

Sunday lunch at the Twice Brewed Inn was as good as usual (slow-roast pork belly and mustard mash with scallions, ginger ice cream to follow…), then the drive home along the switchback of the A68 was only slightly spoilt by the bikers. It was a nice, dry day, so the Big Boys had all been polishing their nice big bikes and were out in force. I don’t have a problem with bikers, most of them are sensible, thoughtful road users with a better than average understanding of the law and safety, but a proportion of them do seem to feel that somehow they are in some strange kind of war, flying heroic, doomed missions against enemy motorists. The thing that scares me is the possibility of coming round a bend and finding some numpty on a Kawasaki coming at me on my side of the road, well over the speed limit and too excited to think straight. Racing leathers and incontinence knickers. Jesus.

The A68 - hang on to your lunch

In my boyhood I travelled thousands of miles on the pillion of my dad’s bikes (which is why I walk like John Wayne), and I don’t wish to end my account of a super little trip on a grumpy note, but I do not find the sight of a line of bikers in my rear view mirror a comforting one – at least one of them will be forced (by peer pressure?) to squeeze past at the wrong moment, in a silly place. On Sunday there was a moment when one chap decided to overtake me without noticing that I was signalling to overtake some cyclists – a strange oversight for a brotherhood who spend their lives complaining about the lack of vision and thoughtlessness of others.

When I was learning to drive, back in the age of steam, when avoiding running down the man in front with the red flag was part of the knack, I was taught by an ex-Army instructor named Derek. One thing he said to me has always stuck:

The things which cause more accidents than anything else are surprises. If you do something unexpected – travel at the wrong speed for the conditions, turn without signalling, whatever – you are putting complete reliance on other road users’ ability to cope with the situation; if they don’t manage to cope, whether or not you think they should have, the fault is your own for causing the situation in the first place.

Driving lessons

Not exactly earth-shaking logic, but it occurs to me that a minority of the biker fraternity specialise in – take a pride in – doing things which are surprising. Bomb-burst manoeuvres where they overtake someone on both sides at once, overtaking on a blind corner despite double white lines, travelling as fast as physically possible all the time (and in my home area, which has some fine, fast, twisty roads, we also have inconveniences such as people who live here, horses, children on bicycles, deer, etc etc) – none of these help a great deal.

Here’s a chance for someone to score an equaliser by complaining (quite rightly) about the dreadful standard of car-driving on the British roads, which should serve to fuel the war and help greatly. I’m not sure, but I think that if large groups of young men gathered together on a nice Sunday in September, equipped with the most powerful cars they could afford, and travelled in convoy, as fast as possible, up and down the A68, they would stand a very fair chance of being arrested, incontinence knickers and all.

I hope that in the next few days I should get out my wargames table after a long lay-off – if nothing else, I am keen to take some photos to catalogue my ECW collection. With luck, I should have something more relevant to blog about.

Hooptedoodle #133 - Hadrian's Wall - a quick revisit

In September 2012 I walked the entirety of Hadrian's Wall, West to East (which is traditionally the "wrong" way). It was a worthwhile trip, but there were a few minor regrets which caused me to make a mental note to come back another time.

(1) Doing the whole of the Wall - right across England from coast to coast - is an achievement in itself, but, of the six days it took us to do it, the first two (Bowness on Solway, through Carlisle to Banks) and the last two (Chollerford, through Heddon on the Wall and downtown Newcastle to Wallsend) show very little evidence of the wall itself, and are pretty uninspiring really, not least since parts of them have been re-routed by the National Trails people to take them right away from anything vaguely Roman.

(2) The weather was pretty awful for the second half.

(3) To be honest, my two companions really didn't get on very well, which had a lot to do with one of them having failed to prepare properly for the expedition, and thus struggling with blisters and lack of physical condition and slowing everything down. I was cast in the role of reluctant piggy-in-the-middle for much of the trip.

I promised myself I would come back, in a quieter season, with more suitable company, in decent weather, and do the lovely middle section again. This week I did it.

With three old walking buddies, I stayed two nights at the Twice Brewed Inn (which is worth the trip just for the beer and the grub), and on Tuesday we walked from Banks Turret to Steel Rigg, scrambling along the crags for much of the way, and on Wednesday we spent the morning completing the crags, from Housesteads Fort back to Steel Rigg.

Excellent - the weather was clear and actually hot, and it was really most enjoyable. We also won the pub quiz by a Roman mile on the Tuesday night, which may be connected with being the only entrants who were old enough to answer most of the music questions.

Once again, I am humbled by the engineering achievement which the wall represented in its day - or by any standards you care to name, for that matter. You couldn't get one built now, I think.

Walking alongside the River Irthing, which has moved a few hundred metres
sideways from the place where the Romans put a bridge across it

A good day for being a Roman soldier - Foy in the orange jerkin (easily visible
to rescue helicopters - which is a joke) and silly old lucky campaigning hat
(to avoid optical migraines caused by bright sunlight - which is not a joke)

Hooptedoodle #65b - Hadrian's Wall - Days 3 to 6

Day 3 – Saturday – Banks to Twice Brewed Inn – 14 miles

After the ritual Full English breakfast (death by Cumberland Sausage) we set off in a beautiful morning. Early morning ground frost disappeared quickly, and we had almost perfect walking weather, though we still had to watch out for mud patches.

The track passes through many fields, mostly with a stile in the corner. For some reason (perverse humour?) the cattle like to congregate in the corners, so that an attractive green field will have areas of deep gloop in front of the stile where it has been trampled.

After Greenhead, the track swings round towards the first of the crags – a jaw-dropping sight, with just a small thrill of trepidation about how near the edge the track goes. In fact it is strenuous – more so than I expected, though not as severe as some of the Austrian walks or the Pentlands Hills hike I did recently. The trail goes up and down a series of steep cliff-top paths, with stone steps inserted to protect the trail and make the climbing safer. Having said which, I would hate to attempt these steps in the wet.

One of my colleagues was having problems with blisters, and our speed of walking slowed right down. At one point I was concerned that at our current rate we would not get off the hills before it became too dark for safety. However, after a pretty hard day we reached the Twice Brewed Inn, which served up its very fine eponymous beer and magnificent slow-roast pork belly with mashed spuds and black pudding (apologies to any vegans, especially teetotal vegans).

Cumbrian countryside

Birdoswald

What became a familiar view - the path runs straight ahead

Yet another milecastle

The history walks along with you

Medieval rip-off - Thirlwall Castle - "Excuse me, sir, I don't suppose

you would know anything about the whereabouts of a large quantity of

very old masonry?"

First glimpse of the crags after Greenhead

Up and down...

...and up again

One of my colleagues, feet badly blistered, delighted to reach the Twice

Brewed Inn as the sun sets behind him

Day 4 – Sunday – Twice Brewed Inn to Greencarts Farm (Humshaugh) – 15 miles

Another fantastic day’s walking. The Twice Brewed is a little off the hill trail, so we had to climb back up to the top of the crags, and then once again we had the switchback path and amazing views, along past the lake of Craig Lough, Housesteads fort, and eventually the path dropped down to run alongside the road. This was a rather boring section after the wonders of the earlier part of the day, and the weather began to deteriorate – wet and increasingly cold.

We arrived, tired and a bit grumpy, at Greencarts, to learn that there was an amber weather warning for the next two days. I had no idea what an amber warning signified, but it didn’t sound like good news.

Due mention must be made here of Mrs Maughan at Greencarts, who, since it was Sunday, produced roast gammon, complete with Yorkshire pudding, stuffing and home grown root vegetables. Raspberry sponge to follow – what a good job we were on a walking trip!

Turret on the crags

Craig Lough far below - complete with swans

The remains of an arch at Housesteads

And if you thought you were getting to walk on the actual Wall, forget it.

COH.II.SAG.HAM. would have found this funny, I think

The north wall of Housesteads from the barbarian side

Near Greencarts

Day 5 – Monday – Greencarts to Heddon-on-the-Wall – 18 miles

It turns out that an amber warning is definitely not what you are looking for on a walk like this. The wind was now in our faces, the temperature dropped and the rain was horizontal. The last two days of this walk are not very interesting anyway – there is very little actual wall to see, so it is mostly an act of faith. After you leave Chesters fort behind you, for all the visual evidence you might as well be walking the Great Wall of China at this stage.

We did give serious thought to getting a bus into Hexham and abandoning the full walk, but – though we were wet and cold and thoroughly miserable – we stuck with it and got through a hard slog. I am delighted to say that my gear stood up well to the test – my old Brasher boots were terrific, and my cheapo Regatta waterproof over-trousers were a life-saver.

We stayed at a ranch-style hostel on a farm, dried our kit and listened to news of serious flooding in Morpeth, plus forecasts of more of the same for the next day. At night it was hard to sleep for the wind roaring. It occurred to me that if someone had been employing me to do this trip I would have resigned at that moment.

I’m sorry there are no pictures of the last two days – it was just too wet to get my camera out.

Day 6 – Tuesday – Heddon-on-the-Wall to Wallsend – 14 miles

We were now sufficiently cynical to make some policy decisions.

First point to note is that we were tired and cold and keen to complete our walk from coast to coast with or without reference to Roman walls or anything else. Second point to note – which may justify our attitude a little – is that the official Hadrian’s Wall Path walk is a thing of compromise anyway. The site of the wall is known, and the original scheme was for a walk to follow it, but concerns about erosion, disagreements with individual farmers about access to their land and – more significantly – involvement of the National Trails people have fudged the routing of the eastern-most section of the walk. The HWP through Newcastle is now a scenic trek along the northern bank of the Tyne, which has nothing to do with Hadrian except that it ends at the site of Segedunum, the coastal fort at the end of the wall.

We decided to cut out the detour and walk straight through central Newcastle to Wallsend, which was probably a smart move.

Done it. Tired and cold, but unbloodied and in good shape.

Afterthoughts

Am I glad I did it? Definitely. Was it as I expected? More or less – some of the climbing was harder work than I thought it would be, and on some of the sections – especially in the bad weather – the tedium is a killer, but overall it is not nearly so arduous as the West Highland Way in Scotland. In the direction we did the walk – apart from the separate objective of crossing England on foot – days 1, 5 and 6 were not very stimulating.

I think I might revisit Hadrian some time in the future (if I’m spared....), but I would approach it differently – I would book a few nights at the Twice Brewed and do day walks over defined stages of the crags in the central section. That really is the very best of the wall, and an unforgettable experience.

Last little moan – the signposting on the walk is generally good, but from time to time there are no clues which way to go, and some of the pointers are inaccurate, which is not helpful if the conditions are difficult. Compared with my recent experience of the excellent signposting of walkways in the Tyrol, I think the HWP could do rather better in this respect.

However – mustn’t grumble. I met a lot of interesting people and was grateful for a lot of hospitality and kindness, and I had an excellent time.

The museum at Segedunum, on a much sunnier day. We couldn't find the place at first, failing to realise that the large building that looks like a modern colliery was what we were looking for. I had hoped to see the big cranes at Swan Hunter's shipyard, but sadly they have been
sent to China.

Hooptedoodle #65a - Hadrian's Wall - Days 1 & 2

First glimpse of actual Roman wall, between Walton and Banks

Day 1 – Thursday – Bowness-on-Solway to Stanwick (Carlisle) – 12 miles

No pictures today. Incessant rain and deep mud (I sank almost to my knees in a harmless looking field – Cumbrian mud is special) made this day rather heavy going – not helped by the fact that we made an ill-judged detour of about 3 miles to get a distant view of a monument to Edward I on the marshes – he died there, of dysentery. No visible trace of Roman walls thus far – at one point we travelled along an interestingly straight road which we thought might well follow the line of the wall, but in fact it was built on an old railway! A few herons on the tidal flats of the Solway, but mostly the day was a bit grim.

Bright spots in the evening were an excellent Indian meal in a Tandoori restaurant in Carlisle, catching part of a rare Liverpool FC win on TV in the pub and – best of all – heroic efforts by our host at the B&B to help us clean and dry our boots and wash some very dirty clothes. Most kind and much appreciated.

Day 2 – Friday – Stanwick to Banks (near Walton) – 14 miles

Much better day – little or no rain, but still a lot of slow progress through muddy areas. We got our first sighting of a recognisable piece of wall near the end of the day. This is a very rural area – villages well spaced out, and most of the pubs have shut down, apparently. The recession is here.

Despite the lack of authentic wall thus far, there is an abundance of rectangular blocks of dressed stone in the dry-stone dykes and the barns, and it’s pretty obvious where it came from…

Because refreshment sites are thin on the ground, there are a number of honesty bars along the way offering cold drinks and snacks – something I’ve not seen on other walking trails. Tomorrow we should get into the sections where the wall is much more continuous – with luck the mud should be better, though there will be more climbing to do. Beautiful countryside - as we climbed up towards Banks, there were fine views to the South West to Skiddaw and the Lake District.

Main problem to date - the mud seems almost bottomless at times

Hadrian's personal honesty bar service - a classy touch - a

Coke or a Mars bar from the Emperor's personal stocks

Hooptedoodle #65 - Hadrian's Wall - Intro

On Wednesday I'm heading off to meet up with a couple of well-seasoned hikers, and we shall do the Hadrian's Wall Walk - the whole thing - West-to-East (i.e. in the "wrong" direction). Our starting point is Bowness-on-Solway, and we'll set off on Thursday morning. We have 6 days' walking, with overnight stops in the vicinity of Carlisle, Walton, Steel Rigg, Chollerford, Heddon-on-the-Wall and Wallsend. On paper it looks reasonable - but there again, on paper you don't have flies, mud and old legs to contend with!

The Wall ends at Wallsend (the Romans probably felt that the name made it an obvious place to stop), and then we'll head into Newcastle to get our various transports home. I am comparatively local, being based in South East Scotland, but my colleagues will be coming up from London and Dorset respectively. I have explained to them that they will not find ATM's or Starbuck's or branches of Waitrose on the Wall, and I think they understand.

The pictures here are not mine - just stuff I liked and borrowed to get myself in the mood. These are all views of the more remote part, between Greenhead and Chollerford. I intend to record some thoughts and some pictures on the way - how closely this will correspond to live reporting will depend on a few things - weather, fatigue, wi-fi availability in the overnight stops and (possibly) beer. However it works out, you should hear more of this trip. If my netbook or my brain should malfunction, I may write up the whole thing when I get back.

Or perhaps we might just spend the whole week in the Twice-Brewed Inn, and I'll make up some kind of a cover story.