so close – 20 sep, 2018
Day 42 Land’s End to John O’Groats – Carlisle to Twin Willows
Distance: 25km
Cumulative distance: 1065km
I timed my day off perfectly in Carlisle. It was Storm Ali’s turn to wreak havoc on the UK, and this time we didn’t have an entire ocean separating us from the worst of it. Ireland copped it very badly (I later read that two people had been killed), but the north of England and Scotland’s south received a fair battering as well. I was out and about doing my usual chores, and at times had to cling onto the nearest lamp post to combat the gale-force winds. I was doing it in my short shorts as well, given I still hadn’t found a viable tracksuit alternative that would help me manage the ever cooler temperatures whenever I wasn’t walking. I strolled into one charity shop after poking about the impressive cathedral grounds, and the ladies told me they’d had quite a hearty chuckle at watching this lunatic walking around outside in a pair of footy shorts with his hair flapping around in the wind. I told them I was on a mission for some trackies (joggie bottoms in England speak), but there wasn’t too much available on the rack. This was proving a bit tougher than I thought it might, and there wasn’t much ahead of me over the next 200km or so. I decided to put the tracksuit mission on the backburner until I passed through Glasgow in a week’s time, and head back to my BnB.
The strangest thing happened to me the next morning at breakfast. I sprung out of bed in slightly more urgency than usual knowing that Scotland beckoned this afternoon, and sat down for my final English breakfast of the trip. About two mouthfuls in, the fire alarm started blaring incessantly and the poor lady in charge of the BnB operation could not for the life of her make it stop. Every time she punched in the code, it would fall silent for five seconds before it started up again. I wolfed down my brekky as she enlisted her husband to stand by the alarm and furiously punch in the code at five second intervals. Then she came and told me what she thought must have happened:
“You know what it was…it was the Japanese girl.”
“Oh,” I said, “The one staying in the other room?”
“Yeah, the Japanese girl, just now when she walked out the door she looked at me and said sorry before stepping outside. I don’t think she could work out how to open the door.
“She don’t speak a woooord of English the Japanese girl.”
The other guest had inadvertently mistaken the ‘Smash this in case of an emergency’ button for the non-existent door release. After referring to her guest as Japanese about 20 more times, she slumped forlornly on the chair across from me as her husband valiantly continued punching in the code to cut the alarm. Eventually the alarm stopped, and I said my farewells to the owner and her exhausted looking husband. On the way out I too a glance at the red emergency button beside the door, and the glass around it which had been caved in half an hour earlier. Then I pointed myself towards Scotland and I was away!
The first mile or two was just shaving off the rest of Carlisle’s outskirts and then I crossed some parkland, spoke to Mum and Dad about the fast-approaching preliminary final, and I was away. My plan was coming together nicely. I’d teed up a few mates to meet me in Glasgow next Friday night, and we’d already managed to suss out a pub which would be playing the AFL grand final live from about 5am Saturday morning. All that stood between me and that glorious date now was about 130-odd miles (and the small matter of beating Collingwood in the preliminary final tomorrow). I glanced down at my map and realised Scotland was a bit further away than I’d anticipated. On a map showing all of Great Britain, Carlisle looks like a dot that’s virtually on the Scottish border, and I figured everything in between was probably some sort of demilitarised zone where Robert The Bruce’s descendants stood at one end eyeing off the progeny of Edward the second. As it turns out, a crow flying due north from Carlisle would need to cover about 20km before crossing the border into Scotland. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to get off the ground no matter how much I flapped my arms so I had to walk northwards instead.
I went north-eastwards to be more accurate, which meant crossing into Scotland would take even longer than I’d hoped – the English-Scotland border runs in a north-eastern direction, roughly from Carlisle in England’s west up to Berwick which almost shares its latitude with Glasgow. And soon enough I managed to get tangled up in an extremely muddy farm where I passed several working tractors and needed about half an hour to figure out where I was going. I eventually hacked my way across the well under utilised public footpath and came to a field with grass that was about a foot long and completely folded over, possibly thanks to yesterday’s wind. That was a tough slog to the road, which provided much easier walking into Kirklinton where I stopped for lunch in a church, and had a chat to Mel on the phone.
There was a slight obstacle between myself and the border, namely the River Lyne, which was rather inconveniently placed less than a mile from where I’d just devoured some Icelandic yoghurt (purchased that morning in Asda) and a nutella wrap. The map suggested there was a public footpath that would take me over the back of a farm and down across the river, presumably by way of a shiny, golden bridge which would keep me delightfully dry. After walking right through a cluster of farm buildings, and saying hello to an elderly lady who didn’t seem to mind I was tramping right by her house, I descended a steep, muddy slope and came to a junction of barbed wire fences. Between me and the river was a field full of cattle, so I clambered underneath the fence (snagging my backpack on the barbed wire in the process) and stomped over the field. It was immediately apparent there was no bridge in sight, only a fast flowing river almost 20m wide and a sharp bank on the other side to a main road high above. I dumped my backpack and went for a stroll upstream looking for a bridge, but only found more rapids. Downstream was no better either and unfortunately there was nowhere suitable to cross without having to heave my bag above my head and try and keep my nose above water. So I started walking downstream, parallel to the river, and when that became impossible I jumped back up to the higher ground and followed the fence line of the farm. A few hundred metres along I popped back down to the river and discovered it was a fair bit wider here, but also much more shallow. It was time to go for it I figured, otherwise I’d probably be stuck in England forever. This took me back to my Iceland days where fording glacial rivers was pretty commonplace on long hikes. I took off my boots, and socks, tied them all together then put one my thongs and stepped in. The water actually wasn’t too cold considering, and after about five minutes of careful and very slippery navigation, I made it across. I even managed to pick a path which kept the water at knee height. Once I was over the other side I quickly slipped back into my socks and boots which instantly warmed my feet, and tried to devise a plan for scaling this bank of dirt now in front of me. I had to hack my way back upstream a little then I hauled myself up the embankment, eventually emerging at a random little camp site with a bunch of glamping pods. I hadn’t expected that. From there I jumped onto a little driveway and found a road which had me back on track, just as light rain started to fall. Unfortunately, I wasn’t going to make it to Scotland until tomorrow.
The rain came down with more and more urgency as the afternoon wore on and I crawled my way up the road for what seemed like miles through little villages like Easton and Scuggate which didn’t offer much outside of a few houses. At one stage about a kilometre from Twin Willows I ducked into an old shelter by the side of the road just for some respite from the rain before finishing off the journey and walking into a beautiful farm which offered camping and caravan sites. Colin and his motorised scooter came to meet me at the front door, before his son (I think) Richard came along and we had a chat about farming and walking and hip operations. Colin told me how foot and mouth had come through the farm a few years ago, wreaking all sorts of havoc on their herd of Highland x Shorthorns. A fire three years ago also came through and took out some farm buildings, but they were still surviving and even thinking of setting up some wooden huts in the trees. For now they were willing to give me one of their glamping pods for the price of a pitch – they were available and it’d save me putting up my tent in the rain. Ahh the kindness of strangers knows no bounds.
