Day 2: Heddon to Walwick

Today was a bad day. I think I gained a little insight into some tired American football clichés – “Play through the pain,” and the admonition to running backs “Just worry about the next first down – not the next touchdown.” During most of the day I was in excruciating pain. I’m not talking about extreme discomfort – I’m talking about sharp pains that literally brought tears to my eyes at times.

The day started quite well. I woke up comfortably at 7 AM and took another shower and an Aleve. I am sure that I won’t have this luxury the next few days when we will all be sharing rooms and bathrooms. We came down for a fantastic English breakfast with corn flakes, bacon (what we would call Canadian bacon), an egg sunny side-up, sausages, buttered toast, marmalade, and coffee. It was delicious and filling. If you ever do the walk, this is a B&B I would heartily recommend. Since our “Ironsign B&B” was down the Hadrian’s path about two miles from our starting point for the day’s walk, we took a cab back to the Houghton North Farm Bunk Barn where everyone else was staying. We realized that we could just leave our backpacks at the B&B and pick it up as we walked past the place two miles after leaving for the morning. When we got back to the Houghton North Farm, we were given our packed lunches. One of the other walkers, Jo, offered to carry my lunch pack since she had her backpack. I agreed.

I got separated from the group barely fifteen minutes into the walk for the day. Archie, my walking companion reminded me that we were fast walkers and that I may not want to get too far ahead of my lunch pack. I agreed and decided to wait for Jo and my lunch before catching up with him. I stopped and waited as all the different walkers went by me with no sign of Jo. About 20 minutes later, she came by with a small group. Unfortunately, her water pack was leaking and they had to stop and fix it. I took my lunch from her and walked on. About twenty minutes later, I walked by the Ironsign B&B and picked up my backpack. By this time, I was at least a mile behind the others (except Jo and her group). It didn’t take me long to realize something was wrong.

As I was walking, I was getting increasingly concerned about my left foot. Right along the left outside edge of the foot was a progressively sharp pain with every step I took. I tried to “shake it off,” but it kept getting worse. About an hour into the walk, I was starting to wince with every step I took. Another mile later, I was wondering if I was going to make it. The pain just kept getting worse and I was noticeably limping by this time. Every step sent a sharp pain along my foot. Within another half hour, each step was sending a sharp pain up my leg. By 11 o’clock, I was in such unbearable pain that I occasionally had tears fill my eyes. I just decided to focus on taking one step at a time. I had fleeting thoughts of calling a cab, calling off the walk, finding a ride to the next destination, etc. I really couldn’t imagine how I was going to walk all the way in this excruciating pain. But, having no choice, I just kept going. “Walk through the pain,” I told myself. I tried different gaits, different limps, transferring all the weight to my right foot, etc. Some of these tricks worked for a while but the pain always came back. I dreaded stopping because it would mess up some gait that was working.

I had decided in the morning that I would stop for lunch at 1 PM. At about 12:45, I passed by a bench and decided to stop and was just about to take my backpack off when I glanced at my watch and saw it read “12:46.” I thought it would be cheating if I stopped early (and it would make my post-lunch walk longer) and so decided to soldier on. “Walk through the pain …” I finally ran into Dan and the rest of a fairly large group at The Errington Arms, a nice looking pub. I stopped for lunch and asked Dan for a bandage. I took off my shoes and thought that if I bound my left foot tight with a bandage, it may help with the pain. So, I tried to bind my foot as tightly as I could. Dan had a map and during their conversation, I discovered that not only were we still about 8-9 miles away, but that our B&B was quite a bit outside of Walwick (pronounced “Wallick,” of course). Apparently, it was a lot more than 16 miles we had to do today.

The packed lunch was actually quite excellent – egg and tomato sandwich (It’s tom-ah-toe, not tom-aye-toe), lemon drizzle cake, sausage pastry, an apple, and orange juice. I ate lunch, drank a diet coke, and I popped two ibuprofen before setting out again after about a 25-minute break. It was still extremely painful. I just wanted to get to the destination. I think it helped that I walked alone all day – I would have had a hard time not complaining about the pain if there was someone to listen.

I also encountered my first chunk of the wall. All along, we’ve been following the “Hadrian’s Wall Pathway,” but have seen very little of the wall. Finally, I encountered a nice 15-foot section of the wall that was marked. I tried to set up the self-timer and took a few photos. I think I tried to smile – but given my foot pain, I don’t know if I managed it.

The scenery was beautiful. It varied from vast meadows and fields of grain dotted with sheep to picturesque trails through some woods. I tried hard to enjoy the scenery. It wasn’t too bad since the scenery changed every now and then – it wasn’t constantly changing. So, I had enough stretches of the same view that I could put my head down and make progress (that’s all I was focused on). The pathway goes through many, many pastures that belong to private owners. So, there are a variety of “styles” of turnstiles – most of which need to be climbed over. And, it isn’t always an easy climb. There are sometimes as many as four or five steps down from the turnstile you’ve just climbed. At one point, I had to walk right past a bull that was sitting on the path. I was nervous because there was a story about a lady doing the walk recently who was killed by a bull. She was walking with a dog that barked at the bull and it charged.

Unbelievably, by about 4:30, the pain in my foot turned into a dull ache. This actually helped a lot. The sharp pains were much worse. I think my foot was so swollen that the shoe was acting as a sort of tourniquet that helped ease the pain a little. Or, it may have taken a couple of hours for the ibuprofen to really kick in. At one time, I was going downhill and discovered that the pain went down as I speeded up down hill. After that, I actually started running down every down slope so I could make some painless progress. Any points where the pain was down, I would speed up.

I finally made it to the Greencarts Bunk Barn at about 5:30 PM. Given the long out-of-the-way walk to get to this place, it should have been better. This is really rustic. The barn where we are all staying is, well, a barn! It just has a bunch of bunk beds moved into the barn. When I went for a shower, the water just stopped after ten minutes. Since I was still covered with soap, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I found that if I turned off the water for about 30 seconds and quickly turned it back on, I would get one quick spurt of water. Since I just wanted to get the soap off, I did this several times and managed to get most of the soap off. I then went into one of the other bathrooms and used the sink to wash out my socks and underwear. My T-shirt of the day gets left behind here. I really should have brought some flip flops. It’s a pain to get my shoes on every time I need to walk to the bathroom (which is in a neighboring building). If you’re ever on Hadrian’s Walk, my advice to you is to skip Greencarts Bunk Barn.

It wasn’t all bad. Dinner was actually quite good. But then again, when you’re that hungry, anything tastes great. There’s a tiny TV on a table here (the picture keeps disappearing every now and then), but the crowd is watching the Netherlands play Uruguay in the World Cup semis. We have two Dutch walkers in the group and one of them, Arjan, has brought a flag and even painted his face. The mood is good now as Holland is up 1-0.

My foot isn’t hurting at all now. But every time I get up from the chair my knee hurts and my entire body aches. If anyone needs to know that I am suffering through this walk for a sense of schadenfreude, they can smile now.

I bet tomorrow will be a better day.

Day 1: Wallsend to Heddon-on-the-Wall

I didn’t think I would start having doubts about this walk on the very first day, but sitting here resting my feet at the Houghton Farm B&B, I’m wondering what I’m in for during this walk. And the conditions today were as ideal as they could be. The weather here si perfect for walking. It was cool and cloudy almost all the way. I would guess that the temperature was in the 60s climbing occasoinally into the low 70s when the sun came out. There were a few drizzles along the way, but nothing that lasted too long or was even heavy enough for me to pull out my jacket or cover up the backpack.

Gagan dropped me at Wallsend station at about 9:30 in the morning. Even though we were only supposed to get there at 10 AM, there were already a few people there. The larger group didn’t get there until a few minutes after 10 AM and we set out on our walk soon after. The first depressing part was walking for about an hour and turning the corner to find the Tyne and Millennium bridges in front of us. Of course, these are close to Newcastle town centre and I had gone by it on my way to the Wallsend station. Psychologically it just seemed that we hadn’t made much progress since all that walking had just got me back to where I started. As we were walking by the Millennium bridge someone mentioned that it was going to go up in about ten minutes. Since Srini had explained to me earlier a little about this high-tech bridge, I was intrigued to see it go up. It was really quite an impressive sight and we kept going after watching it go all the way up.

After a while, I caught up with Archie, Dan’s father-in-law. I found he waslk walking at a pretty solid pace that seemed to match mine. As I suspected, it is actually a little harder to walk slowly and so it was nice to find someone who walked reasonably fast. We quickly moved near the front of the pack and kept going. Frankly, although I enjoyed keeping that torrid pace, it was very different than what I anticipated. I thought it would be relatively slow with frequent stops and lots of conversation. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t much to see on this first leg. We walked along the river and crossed a couple of motorways as we followed the path. There was absolutely no sign of any wall along the way and so we just kept walking. In fact, our first stop was at 1 PM on a bench for lunch. Srini had made a couple of kabab rolls for me that were fantastic. I also owe Gagn a vote of thanks. She gave me two individually wrapped rolls and I insisted that one would be enough. She pushed me into taking both. Am I glad I had two. By 1 PM, I was definitely hungry and had no trouble finishing both the rolls. And, they were really delicious. The lunch on the bench slowed us down only about 15 minutes and we quickly got back on the path and kept up our steady pace along the path. A little after 2 PM, we came across a nice looking pub along the river called The Boathouse and I decided to stop for a coffee and a toilet break. Yes, this was my first stop of the day! We ran into a couple of walkers in the pub and they gave us the encouraging news that we were barely four miles from our destination of the day. We had walked about 12 miles in less than 4 hours. Encouraged by this news, Archie and I set off on that last leg.

After a while, we actually came to a sign that told us that Heddon-on-the-Wall, our stop for the night, was only 1 ¾ miles away. I remember turning to Archie and saying “We’re almost there!” Famous last words. It turns out that starting at that point, it was all uphill. Okay, I was feeling fairly good at that point even though right after the Boathouse stop I had a twinge in my left calf that would not go away. But, it didn’t get any worse even though Archie noticed and asked why I had a slight limp. Still, when we started going uphill, we slowed considerably. Then we went uphill some more. After going uphill a little more, we got to town and had to go uphill some more to get to the Farm where a big part fo the group was staying. I was scheduled to stay at another B&B a few miles away, but we were gathering at the Houghton North Farm and a taxi had been arranged to get me and a few other people to the Ironsign B&B after dinner. I’ll admit it was tough. Still, Archie and I got there at exactly 4 PM. I sat in their nice lounge and relaxed. My calf is still “twingey,” but I hope a couple of Ibuprofens tonight and tomorrow will take care of it.

The other thing I learned was that I had grossly overpacked. It *is* a lot different walking with a full backpack and my backpack really was very heavy. Honestly, it was not even easy to pick up off the ground. Now, thinking about it, why do I need 8 pairs of underwear for six days of walking? Exactly what was I planning to do with the extra underwear? I also carried 8 pairs of socks for the six-day walk. Since underwear are not that expensive back home, I have decided to leave them behind each day rather than carry that extra weight. Really – the backpack is HEAVY. Anything I can get out of there would be worthwhile. There were times today when I was wondering if it was even worth bringing this laptop with me. So, the decision has been made – underwear must go!

The early arrivals were chatting with the owner of the farm and I mentioned that the last two miles were really hard for me. She said, “You think this was hard? Wait until tomorrow. And it’s the last two miles is very steep uphill.” “This was nothing,” she repeated to make sure I had heard. “Tomorrow is really steep. There are hills up and down all the way and then the last two miles are really steep and it’s all uphill.” She pronounced “uphill” so it sounded like “oophill.” She was vigorously nodding her head with pursed lips and raised eyebrows. Not an encouraging sign.And, tomorrow is our longest day. We are supposed to be walking 16 miles tomorrow. Now I know it is all uphill and downhill – ending with a long, steep uphill climb. Maybe being prepared for it will make it easier. If not, there’s always Ibuprofen.