England – 60 Miles Not 60 Kilometers, Oops
June 1
What a day! According to Mike’s FitBit, we walked 22 miles today. It took us over 8 hours, including a couple small navigational corrections and a coffee break.
Last night, we didn’t get to sleep until 11-ish because of our night owl neighbor campers. At 4:00am, the bird alarm clock went off. A cacophony of birds decided it was time to wake everyone. It was so loud. And one of the birds sounded a lot like an alarm clock beeping. Mike couldn’t go back to sleep so he got up and made coffee, while I tried to will myself to sleep more.
We were the first up and out of the campground, which was about 6:15am. We noted that our feet were already a little sore when we began. Apparently, spending a week walking around London, a couple of days walking around Newcastle and several hours the day before in Carlisle caused us to be less than prime when we started. Our hike began just outside of Beaumont and ended near Walton.
When we reached Carlisle, we were pretty confident about our hiking abilities. We felt good and thought we had accomplished a big part of the day’s hike. This is what we get for not having a map. We had a cup of coffee and delicious pastries while waiting for the outdoor store to open. We bought a map and a towel and continued with the hike. When we looked at the map, we were surprised how long we still had to hike.
The hike was a bit surreal. We literally hiked through fields of sheep and cows, through people’s backyards and around their barns. We had to make sheep and their lambs move out of our way. The cows didn’t move very much. The trail is marked very well with acorn markers on gates, fences, and with sign posts. There is very little food on the trail. There are small refreshment stands at people’s houses, where you pay on-your-honor. We bought some gummy treats from one when we learned the pub where we thought we would eat lunch was closed. We ended up sitting on the side of a road, eating protein bars and nuts that we brought with us and finishing the gummy candies, while giving our feet a good rest.
Finding our camp was a challenge, only because we didn’t go far enough on the trail. But we found it and arrived just after 3pm. We went to a local cafe for a bite to eat. Tonight, we’re having dinner with the farm hosts. Now, we’re sitting in the sun, staring at sheep across a ditch from our tents. It’s really beautiful here.
We are definitely outside of our comfort zone. Walking through people’s property and then onto other private property trying to find our tents, knocking on house doors asking for beer (at our campsite place), trying to navigate with a poor map and following old signs, wondering if we are in the right place. But, it’s definitely an experience.
Throughout our entire time in England, we’ve been surprised that they talk distance in miles instead of kilometers. We just realized that this hiking trip is not 60 kilometers as I originally thought when we signed up, but 60 miles! That’s a huge difference. I don’t think Mike is very thrilled with me at the moment. Oops.
We had a lovely dinner provided by the owners of the property we are staying. They have a sheep farm and live in a house built in the 1700s. We had a traditional home-cooked shepherds pie. It was only okay, but I was excited to try the authentic pie. The husband-owner is eccentric and loves to tell stories. We had dinner with three English ladies who are doing the hike with the same tour guide as us. They are in their late 50s to 60s and love to talk. They aren’t very good with directions and had to be “rescued” twice, once this evening by our host and the previous day by our guide, when they got lost. Our other dining companion is a young, Russian priest who now lives in England. He was probably just a couple years older than us. He was hiking on his own, as he does every year. We had an interesting conversation about politics during dinner, where we learned the ladies’ positions on a number of issues including someone about France having a lot of political unrest and that the Russians love Putin.
