27th September 03
The accommodation earns an 8/10, losing marks
for not having en-suite.
The knee is bothering me so I put a crepe
bandage on and take some painkillers. I have now developed toothache, is my body
trying to tell me something, I shall ignore it and try and convince myself that
I can apply “mind over matter”.
We proceed on our way at about 9-00am and
soon find many walkers doing the full walk; they have come from Lincoln, London,
Edinburgh, York, and 2 teenagers camping from Derby.
They are doing it for a Sunderland Hospital Charity in memory of one of their mothers. It is arduous enough just walking never mind running, especially as one of the guys does not have the build of a long distance runner, it turns out however that he has already done the New York marathon, but running up and down stepped inclines is much harder than running on level tarmac. We wish them the best of luck and they go on their way. When they are out of sight I think, that would have been a good photograph taken with roman soldiers but what do we see after a short while, the roman soldiers having a break at their support vehicle, so I offered to make a donation to their charity if we could have a group photograph and they obliged. Fig 3
Figure
3 – The day we met the Romans
We are now seeing much more of the Wall
together with Turrets and Milecastles, at the beginning of the day someone said
to us they were sick of seeing the wall, I now understand what they meant.
As
we walk down the road from the Wall to our accommodation, some Army Cadets
approach us and said “du yuz na where wuz arz”, if we had not both been born
and bred on Tyneside we would not have been able to understand them, they said
they had walked 6 miles and looked as if they had walked 20 miles, they got no
sympathy from “uz” as we had just done 15 miles. Our route had measured 12
miles on the map but this does not take into account the additional distance of
an incline, for example, 10 metres on a map up a hill of 45 degrees is actually
14 metres travelled, so our 12 miles may well be 15 miles travelled, plus the
energy required to climb these hills, it is not surprising that we feel our legs
are not now connected to our bodies or our brains. Brian reminds me that I am
doing this for pleasure. We console ourselves by the fact that we are now at
half distance. This has been the most exhaustive day yet, Brian says it is the
most tiring day he has ever had, I am feeling the same, after 6 tablets,
a very painful leg below the knee, toothache, one blister and totally exhausted,
we eventually reach our resting place. Entering the pub, the music is loud, the
smoke is dense and the barman is singing, just when we need a bit of peace and
quite. He asks me to sign in and I find that my hand
will not follow instructions given from my brain, my body is failing me, but
nothing that a good nights sleep will not put right. It’s not exactly 3 star,
more like 1 star, our tiny bedroom is above the bar where music is being played
continuously, the shower and toilet are of a very poor standard, but in our
condition we look forward to a good meal and a nice pint of beer. A previous
walker had said that the beer was good; I think she meant that was all that was
good. We come down for a meal but as the bar is like a disco, we retire to the
back room for our meal, things do not improve, but the beer is good. We notice
many people in fancy dress and find out that the local Young Farmers are having
a fancy dress “do” with a live band. As we are joined in the back room by a
party of Americans on holiday, we feel embarrassed by the standard of food; they
must think we are a peculiar lot when they see the Young Farmers. I walk into
their private room to see what is going on and come across a young lady, who was
obviously at the front of the queue when they were handing out the breasts, wearing a tee shirt emblazoned
on the front with the inscription
I WISH I
HAD
THESE
FOR BRAINS
We retire to bed with those thoughts, but unable to sleep due to music from the bar, music from the live band at the Young Farmers night out, traffic whizzing past 8 foot from our bedroom window at 60 mph. Not until 11-30pm does it go quite after the bar closes, every one has said goodnight and slammed car doors. It is however Saturday night so we could hardly complain; imagine going downstairs in your pyjamas and asking them to turn the music down.
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