This was a personal mid-challenge challenge. Could we cross the entire neck of England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea in one day? It was not as dramatic as previous days but to read accounts like yesterday, through the Lake District, is one thing; to live them quite another. And I was glad of a calmer day.
Legs still aching from yesterday, we packed up our things into Martyn’s car and headed west out of Carlisle in the opposite direction to our intended destination, South Shields, and took a small road that led us through pasture that flooded during high tide. The locals, according to the woman who served us breakfast, called the area the island, even though it’s not technically an island or even a peninsula really.
We crossed cattle grids, avoided traffic-oblivious cattle and finally made our way to Bowness-on-Solway, at the place where the Solway Firth meets the Irish Sea. Due to low tide and dangerous mud-flats, we didn’t venture far to touch the waters of the Irish Sea and took a few photographs beside the signpost, which claimed Rome was 1,150 miles away. As it happened, Malcolm helped an Italian couple with a photo of the same signpost; in broken English, this couple explained that they intended to walk Hadrian’s Wall. It turns out that, through complete luck, Bowness-on-Solway apparently marks the western end of Hadrian’s Wall.
There is a little museum attached to the cafe, which has a model of a Roman fort and some replica Roman armour and weapons. If you go, just ask the people in the cafe for the key, just as long as you can get past Lola, the tubby papillon dog who barks a good game but is easily placated with strokes or the promise of food.
The journey back to Carlisle seemed like it might be long but Malcolm and I, after the initial grumbles of getting back onto the bikes, quickly found our rhythm and, certainly, my only issue was that I kept reaching for the camera to film more of the bleak beauty surrounding us. Scotland lay just a couple of miles across the water and yet five days ago we had been on the south coast!
We quickly pelted through Carlisle, keen to make as much mileage as possible before we halted. At one point, I stopped to let a load of lorries pass and Malcolm disappeared ahead of me. Not a problem, I could see his high-viz cover ahead of me… except it was not his high-viz but a traffic cone. A phone call later and we were reunited in Brampton but headed out quickly, up some steep hills. Of course, there were hills! Although we had the remnants of Storm Floris at our backs for most of the day, and she seemed happy to do some of the heavy lifting in propelling us forward. Malcolm took a shot of me by an abbey and accidentally left the camera on for 14 minutes, so there is probably a lot of huffing and potential swearing, as we climbed a hill to the first ruin on Hadrian’s Wall for us that day.
Without warning, Malcolm suddenly grabbed the coin given to me as good luck by the guy dressed as a Roman soldier at Fishbourne Roman Palace, and bolted off for the ruin. A German couple smiled kindly at him, as if he was some wayward child ’So much energy!’. Hmm! Of course, Malcolm’s plan turned out to be to try to fool several tourists into thinking he had found the coin buried beneath the ruins. The Japanese tourists seemed so happy for him over his find and Malcolm played out the whole discovery as if it was genuine. Stood a little way away and filming the deception, you can hear me say on camera ‘There’s a special place in heaven for that man’s wife’.
The Roman road we are shadowing today is called Stanegate and it ran just south of the wall across about two-thirds of its length. Dere Street then intersects the wall and continues up into Scotland or Caledonia to the Antonine Wall, which, from my very limited understanding, is now really just a collection of massive, impressive ditches and ramparts for fortifications. I am no historian but it does suggest that, although the wall was to defend against the Caledonian tribes to the north, there was probably some sort of trading going on between the enemies too. I am quite prepared to be shot down by that argument, especially over time frames.
We carried on the road with some spectacular parts of the wall. Some of it may be reconstructed but it still looks impressive and the amount of man hours it must have taken to build it is extraordinary. It is easy to see how it inspired George R. R. Martin to create his own The Wall in ‘Game of Thrones’, although I suspect Hadrian’s Wall was never a 700 foot high wall of ice.
At some point along the way, the water cover on my panniers decided to commit suicide and throw itself between the spokes and the brakes. Nope, old fella, battered and bruised as we both may be, you are coming along for the ride.
I almost came off on the bike today, as the marked downhill route was definitely more for mountain bikes than road bikes. Incidentally, I am still anthropomorphizing my bike and have decided to call her Roama. She may not be the prettiest and is far past her prime, she has a lot of mileage on her and has been around the block a few times, as well as carrying a little extra weight (who isn’t?) but I adore her and she stayed upright, even as a slewed across gravel and when both tires left the ground and into a muddy verge.
We stopped to eat outside at a cafe in Haltwhistle, until the rain drove us inside. Then we headed back into the hills with an absolute monster. An elderly lady who lived on the hill looked at us with astonishment and told Malcolm it was either a 20% or a 25% hill! We walked the second half of it, Malcolm doing slightly better than me with it.
The road above though led us to a spectacular view over the magnificent Roman fort of Vindolanda and then rode along the tops with a following wind and glorious wild countryside and into a descent that saw me reach just under 40mph and Malcolm was probably faster. Incidentally, I set off one of those frown/smiley speed monitors yesterday. I know bicycles can be dangerous but there were no pedestrians about and to get a 32mph and a frowny face – I’ve never felt so pleased to be rebuked.
As I was descending a gorgeous road, a local who didn’t seem to expect any traffic, pulled out in front of me. No problem, I’ll just adjust accordingly. However, almost immediately they stopped to let another oncoming car past and I avoided crashing into the first car’s bumper by centimeters. Roama – bless you! Seven miles seemed to have taken us about 15 or 20 minutes but I can’t be sure
Stopping for an ice cream at Hexham, we headed on towards Newcastle on a wonderfully long and well-maintained cycle path that must have been an abandoned railway. Many men passed us on bikes wearing the same t-shirt but they must have been members of the Miserable Geordie Cycling Club because they didn’t even offer us a smile to our greetings and seemed to resent having to get out of the way to allow us to progress.
Once into Newcastle, we crossed one of the impressive bridges over the Tyne, which had been our almost constant companion for the last 20 miles, and then our progress slowed to about 3 mph, as we had to keep checking Komoot.
Yes, we’re still using Komoot and, before anyone from Komoot sues me, I know we are only using it in the most superficial way, and it does tend to lead you on to safer routes, and it is, for most of the time, very good, very user-friendly with its interface but, sheesh, has she had her moments this trip!
We finally ground out the miles to South Shields… only to discover we had another 3.1 miles to the sea. Malcolm and I were done in, but not to complete the challenge over 3 miles. We dug deep and limped towards the sea abslutely shattered.
Putting the bikes in the back of Martyn’s car, we went for an Indian meal and came back to the hotel, too exhausted to do anything else.
We start heading south and for home tomorrow with 5 days left. We have ridden over 525 miles already, so over half the task done and over half the miles. I am tired but loving it (although my backside might disagree) but when we set off from Fishbourne, it felt like last month, not just a few days ago.
As a side note, I know it is taking me forever to upload videos but I am finding it hard to cycle ride, eat, sleep, blog and edit videos. But, interestingly, at least for the moment, I seem to have misplaced or lost most of the footage of Day 3, the one that tested me the most in terms of both physical and mental resilience.
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Rogues of the Roman Roads 