Another Long Walk: Day 2: Wall! Wall! Everywhere is a Wall!

August 21, 2024: I slept well. The rain did not resume during the night, however the wind picked up and it was extremely breezy in the morning making it extra challenging to break down camp. As soon as I took everything out of the tent and removed myself from inside of it, the tent immediately wanted to fly away!

But eventually, I got everything packed and hit the trail by around 7:00am. The forecast showed a chance of rain in the morning, but the afternoon looked good. In hindsight.... Hahahahaha! Oh, if I only realized how bad the weather forecasts out here really were. I would learn, but I hadn't yet figured that out.

Anyhow, immediately upon leaving Robin Hoods Inn, I found a sign on the trail in memory to a hiker who had been struck and killed by a car on the road in years past, both as a memorial to the killed hiker, but also as a warning to current hikers to be particularly careful along the roads and crossing them.

Memorial for a hiker who was struck and killed by a car.

With that sobering thought in my head, I pushed onward. Most of the day was generally flattish and the trail followed on or near an old military road that General Wade built during the Jacobite rebellions and found the quickest, easiest way to build the new highway was to do it right on top of the ancient wall. So the trail tended to follow on or near that road for most of the day.

I stopped for lunch at the Riverside Kitchen in Chollerford where I ordered a jacket potato and a little past that I stopped for a quick tour of Chesters, an old Roman settlement. I was a bit rushed since I planned such a long hiking day, but that's the way things are sometimes.

A jacket potato for lunch! =)

My guidebook mentioned that there was a giant statue of a penis on a bridge abutment not far from the main trail which I was very tempted to go off trail to take some photos of. I mean, really--a giant statue of a penis?! How could I skip something as interesting as that?! But given the ambitious hiking schedule I had set for myself, I finally decided that it was just too far off trail to look for.

In the afternoon, the clouds became considerably more dark and menacing, and with the strong winds whipping about, it felt bitterly cold as well. When the trail went by Mithras Temple, I climbed down into it for a snack break primarily because it was sunk into the ground and therefore provided a pretty decent wind break. The wind chill was brutal!

I stopped for a short rest and snack break inside of Mithras Temple, mostly because it was located down in a depression and with the walls, it provided a pretty good windbreak.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the trail grew progressively hillier and more challenging, but I passed a few different areas with good samples of Hadrian's Wall. I mostly took a few photos then pushed onward feeling like I didn't really have time to stay and admire them as much as they deserved.

A few hours from camp, it finally started to sprinkle. Noooo! The forecast I checked just that morning said the afternoon had ZERO chance of rain! What the heck was going on?!

It wasn't a particularly strong rain, but combined with the wind, it was absolutely brutal. The windchill factor was amped up tenfold with the addition of wet rain, and I had to stop to put on a couple of extra layers. My camera started to act up, restarting and the lens getting stuck periodically.

I finally pulled out my umbrella--more to protect the camera than myself--but it seemed hopeless. The wind inverted the umbrella in a half second and I battled trying to keep it covering the camera.

Eventually, the trail reached Housesteads, another old Roman fort. It had closed for the day by the time I arrived, and I was so cold, wet and miserable that I didn't even go off trail around the site to the entrance to pick up the stamp for the Hadrian's Wall Path passport.

By this point, my camera was suffering from the weather conditions. The lens cover did not fully retract like it was supposed to, which is that dark blob in the upper right corner. It also wouldn't go back and fully cover the lens when I turned the camera off. Basically, the rain was breaking my camera....

I did, however, pass through an area with trees that help blocked the wind and rain a bit, allowing me to pull out my phone and send an email to the campsite ahead asking if they had a bed available in the hostel, I would prefer that rather than to camp. This was the same place I stayed a week earlier, at Winshields, while hiking the Pennine Way, so I was already familiar with the place and the layout.

Originally, when I thought I'd arrive warm and dry, I had planned to camp. Now that I was cold, wet and the wind was absolutely brutal, I was hoping to be indoors. If, of course, any beds were available.... Anyhow, I sent the email, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best.

I pushed onward, soon reaching the junction with the Pennine Way. My old friend.... seemed like just two days ago I was hiking on the Pennine Way. But of course, it was just two days earlier that I was hiking on the Pennine Way! And, in fact, it was just five days earlier I had walked this very section of trail on the Pennine Way. The weather, however, was considerably better back then!

Pushing onward, I reached Sycamore Gap, where I found two people looking mournfully at the stump where the stately tree once stood. When I approached, I asked them, "Are you guys CRAZY?! Why are you wondering around in this weather?!" I, of course, was crazy, which explained my presence, and it had been at least two hours since I saw the last people on the trail.

The stump hadn't changed much since I saw it five days earlier, but the weather was considerably worse!

They seemed to find my question amusing, but the girl had a thick coat on that looked wonderfully warm. It also looked like it would absorb any rain that hit it--definitely not waterproof--but so thick, it would probably keep her fairly dry for quite a while. And she asked if I had seen the sycamore tree before.

"Well, I saw it five days ago, when I hiked through on the Pennine Way," I said, "but it basically looked the same then as it does now. Just drier."

"But you never saw it when the tree was still standing?"

"No," I replied, "I never had the honor."

She told me that she had hiked out to see it the day after it had happened, which clued me in that this was not a mere tourist like myself, but a local.

"That must have been heartbreaking," I replied--and meant it.

Anyhow, we chatted for a couple of more minutes, but I was freezing cold and stopping to chat did not help warm me up any, so I said goodbye and pushed onward.

I reached the road crossing where my path would veer off from the Hadrian's Wall Path, and followed the road into the hamlet of Once Brewed and decided to go into the Twice Brewed Inn for dinner this time. I was cold and wet and hoped to warm up a bit inside the restaurant. The second I stepped in, one of the waitresses there took one look at me and asked, "Are you okay?"

Really? Again? Why did everyone keep asking me that?!

I stopped at Twice Brewed Inn for dinner... and to get a little drier and warmer and basically get out of the weather. I definitely looked out of place when I walked into here!

Actually, to be fair, I probably would have asked the same thing this time. I was absolutely drenched and shivering with cold. I imagined I must have looked like a rat that just came ashore after being on a sinking boat. And, according to my GPS, I had completed a whopping 25 miles for the day, and much of it included a lot of ups and downs. My feet were throbbing and I couldn't wait to sit down and take off my wet coats. I also took off my wet shoes, replacing them with my Crocs.

After looking over the menu, I decided to order a regular old burger with fries, which was absolutely wonderful! While waiting for the meal, I logged onto the wifi to check my email, and heard back from Malcolm who had replied to my email saying that I'd be in the same room that I was a week earlier, and that I'd have it all to myself (again). Awesome! That was a huge relief. I was so not looking forward to setting up my tent in this brutal weather. It was going to be a struggle just to make sure the tent didn't blow away while I was setting it up! An entire room for myself would be heaven! Plus, I could lay out all my gear to dry. Perfect!

After finishing dinner, I reluctantly put my jackets back on and headed back into the storm. I actually did not bother putting my shoes back on, preferring my Crocs. It was a road walk the rest of the way to Winshields, flat and easy, and perhaps only a quarter-mile away. My feet were already soaking wet, so I didn't much care if the rain could get to them during the walk.

I arrived at the Winshields, and once again found my name on sheet of paper taped to the door where the room was. I was surprised to see that--I knew where I was going having been here the week before--but maybe it was just to make sure I realized that I'd be in the same room as before?

A bigger surprised was when I opened the door and noticed my fleece hat on the windowsill inside next to the keys for the door. My fleece hat! I had realized I lost it somewhere, but thought I left it back at the hotel in Hexham the day after I had spent the night here. It wasn't worth the effort of trying to get it back so I wrote it off as forever lost, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it show up again.

My long last fleece hat made a surprising return!

And I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, it was my fleece hat and not something someone else had bought that was the same style as mine because this particular fleece hat I had sewed myself so it was a one-of-a-kind hat. There wasn't a hat in the entire world that looked quite like this one, so I knew it was my hat. I guess that's one of the advantages of staying in the same place again, nearly a week after staying there the first time. And what a pleasant surprise it was. =)

I was fine without the hat. In its place, I was using buffs on my head to help keep me warm at night so not having it wasn't a particular hardship, but I liked this hat and was glad it had returned. =)

Anyhow, I immediately stripped off all my wet clothes and replaced them with dry, warm clothes from my pack and laid out the wet ones across radiators to hopefully dry out by morning. I spread out all of my other wet gear as well on the floor. At the end of the day, my pedometer showed I had taken over 60,000 steps for the day--smashing the previous day's record step count of 56,000 steps.

My umbrella had been completely shredded from the wind. When opened, a few of the spokes radiating out were clearly bent in half and the umbrella had a weird thing that it no longer wanted to fully close and when it was open, it would open outward like it was trying to catch the rain to form a pool of water above my head. I should throw it away immediately, but it was all I had to protect my camera if the rain continued tomorrow. I definitely needed to replace it the first opportunity I could!

But then I crawled into bed and pretty much went immediately to sleep. I was exhausted!