England – Candy: The Key to Finishing the Day
June 2
Every morning, we went through the same routine. Mike woke up around 4:00am or a little after and made coffee. After my grumbling about the early hour the first morning, he waited until at least 5:00am to wake me up with a cup of coffee. It was really cold during the night. We wore our stocking caps and a lot of clothes and were still cold. In the morning, we’d quickly pack our gear and hit the road around 6:00am.
On the second day of our hike along the Hadrian’s Wall Trail, we were pretty sore from the day before, and I had some blisters to deal with. The route was through more sheep fields with uneven terrain. Hadrian’s Wall was buried during the first part of our hike, and we hiked on top of it. But, we then saw the wall for the first time. It looked like an old, thick, rock wall. The amazing part was that it was built in approximately 62 AD during the Roman Empire. The Wall had mile castles every Roman mile with turrets in between. We saw many of those ruins, including the ruins of castles and forts. On a related note, we were often surprised at how old buildings and houses were, especially when you think that many were built before the U.S. even became a country, and the buildings were still being used.
Early in our hike, maybe just a couple of hours in, we passed a family with a young boy bringing up the rear. When we passed him, he dramatically said “I’m dying.” That cracked us up because it was pretty early in the day and he probably had a ways to go Though, he did have a point-the hike was not easy.
The hike actually got much harder. The last part of the hike started the “undulating hills” that the Russian priest warned us of. He was wrong. They weren’t hills. They were mountains, and they were steep! As we veered off the trail for the day, we saw the next day would start with a really steep and really long climb- glad to save that for tomorrow.
Before then, we had a nice break for lunch when we came across a super cute cafe. We actually found some wifi there too, a rarity, and were able to charge a cell phone. A couple hours later, Jelly Belly Energy Beans (pumped up jelly beans) helped revive Mike as he started dragging. This lead to our candy crutch for the rest of the trip. We made it to the inn before the campground where we were going to stay. It was about 2:00pm so we had late lunch/early dinner. The inn was mediocre. They were out of all burgers and everything that looked interesting to us. We had a yucky meat pie and potato skins, but it was good just to eat something other than protein bars. We bought a bottle of wine to enjoy at the campground.
There was a shortcut through a field (on what they called a public footpath) from the inn to the campground. The field was very uneven and we were hurting, so it was great to see the campground. It was a fairly generic campground just outside of Caw Gap. It looked like any number of campgrounds where we’ve stayed in the Casita. There were a lot of people and a lot of RVs. The camp store was manned by the owner, a really nice lady. We bought candy for the next day’s hike, a couple of scones from her to enjoy with our wine, and ordered a frozen pizza (that she cooked) to split later that night. She made the scones herself from her grandmother’s recipe. Grandma told her “If you can make a good scone, you’ll always have a pound in your pocket.” It was our first official English scone, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
We fell asleep before 8:00pm and before anyone else from our group made it to camp. We were a bit worried whether the three ladies would make it and there was no one to notice if they didn’t but we couldn’t stay awake. I woke up at some point and heard them talking, which made me feel better.
