Another Long Walk: Day 4: Biblical Floods

August 23, 2024: For most of the night, it rained lightly, but by morning the rain fell in torrents! It pounded the tent in sheets. To say it was raining cats and dogs would be an understatement. It was raining elephants and blue whales! The noise of the rain hitting my tent was deafening, but the tent did its job keeping me high and dry.

I decided that I definitely couldn't hike in this weather--it just wasn't practical. So I read my Kindle and watched Netflix shows on my phone to kill the time, but by around 8:00, the rain started to slow and eventually puttered to a stop allowing me to start hiking again at 9:10am. A bit of a late start, but well worth the delay to avoid that biblical storm. Exiting the tent, I imagined I must have felt a bit like Noah finally leaving his ark.

The trail was super wet and muddy today! So much water, so much mud....

The trail today was extraordinarily wet and muddy. I couldn't say that I was surprised given the heavy storm that passed through, but it was still an annoyance. At least I had the foresight to think that this would likely be an issue and put on my waterproof socks. As I've said many times before, they aren't really waterproof, but they still help keep my feet warmer than they otherwise would in the same way a wetsuit would.

The rivers were clearly high as well. Muddy and fast-moving, lapping around trees that were usually above the water level. None of the rivers I saw actually appeared to be flooding houses or other structures, but it would not have surprised me to learn that some structures in the area were suffering from flooding. I don't think I had seen a single muddy river before today--not even on the Pennine Way--but after the rain this morning, they all looked muddy and silty.

Today's section did not include many sections of Hadrian's Wall. It followed the historic route of the wall as best it could, but most of the wall had long since been dismantled and reused in other buildings and projects. There were a few smaller sections to enjoy, but nothing like the miles of walls that the trail followed the last couple of days.

This Roman ruin actually pre-dates Hadrian's Wall by about 30 years. It's the Pike Hill Signal Tower, used to keep watch and send signals. (Plus, note the flooding around it.)

What today lacked for in wall, however, was made up for in honesty boxes and sheds. I actually lost count of the number of honesty setups I passed. Maybe five or six of them? Three were full-fledged honesty sheds that felt like little stores. In addition to all these, there were also a couple of cafes and snack bars along the route. I stopped at one for lunch where I ordered a panini, and then I learned that was only the fourth day that particular cafe had been open.

A panini and Coke lunch. Yum! =)

One fellow early in the day caught up with me at one of the honesty sheds and late in the day caught up with me again at another one, after we had passed all these food and drink options, and we joked that they really needed to spread them out better. There were a lot of sections I would have killed for a cold drink but there was nothing to be found, and now we were tripping over them every half hour!

I wondered what all the people hiking in the opposite direction thought. If they passed all these today and thought they would have all these options on the rest of the trail, they would be sorely disappointed!

So many honesty boxes and sheds today! Nobody will ever starve to death on this section of trail!

I had originally set my sights to camp for the night at a campground just past the town of Carlisle, but when I zoomed into it on Google Maps, I noticed that it was marked as being "temporarily closed." Hmm.... Really? I couldn't imagine why they might have been closed, but it seemed prudent to think of a plan B. I would have preferred to camp right in the town of Carlisle, but there were no campgrounds in the town. Maybe I would have to stealth camp somewhere?

Then I got it in my head to actually do a search for lodging in Carlisle. I knew there was lodging, but everyone had kept talking about it being a bank holiday on Monday so it was a long weekend for everyone. I imagined it was something like a Labor Day in the United States, and figured a lot of people would be traveling and therefore lodging would be particularly expensive--assuming anything was even available at all. which is why I never bothered to check before. But without a campground to stay at, I finally broke down and searched lodging options in Carlisle and was surprised to find a couple of places that not only had availability, but were even reasonably priced! Well, heck, yeah! =) Maybe the biblical floods scared off the tourists?

Artwork in Carlisle

I immediately booked a room at Ibis, and this worked out particularly well for me. Tomorrow would be my last day on the trail, and now my plan was to slackpack to the end of the trail before returning to Carlisle--the major transportation hub in the area--to pick up my full pack and get out of here. Kind of the reverse of what I did at the beginning of the trail in Newcastle.

There was an additional benefit because at this point, given my late start and the days getting shorter, I had doubts if I would have even made it to the campground I had originally planned by sunset. By stopping a few miles short in Carlisle, I could definitely end the day with plenty of light.

Plus, it allowed me to do a large loop through the town, which I could add to Walking 4 Fun. Originally, I didn't think I would have time to walk through town in my rush to get to the campground before sunset, but now I had to walk through town just to get to the hotel!

All-in-all, it wound up working out really well to get a hotel in Carlisle, and I was happy about the upgrade. =)

Carlisle Citadel

I kept hiking, eventually veering off the official Hadrian's Wall Path route at the edge of Carlisle and through the central part of the city to my hotel and checked in. The couple checking in ahead of me were speaking Polish to each other, so I tried to eavesdrop on them. I got the impression that the wife didn't really know much English since the husband did all the speaking with the clerks, but after they paid for their room and got their key, I wished them a "Good afternoon" in Polish as they were leaving, and they replied with the same but seemingly didn't even notice that I had done it in Polish. I guess my Polish was that good. =)

And thus ended another day on the trail. After checking into the hotel, I was able to take a shower and clean up, and I didn't have any need to leave again until the morning.

There wasn't much of the wall to see today, but there were occasionally small pieces to be spotted, like this one: Turret 51a.

Or this bit on Hare Hill.

This honesty shed, instead of a traditional register, had a notepad and tacks to allow hikers to put notes on the wall.

I particularly liked the drawings of the Roman soldiers. =)

Such a wet trail.... And don't be fooled by that dry-looking area in the middle. It's a bog too! It's just not as deep as the water on each side of it!

The hill in this photo is actually a buried part of the wall. They had excavated and exposed it decades earlier, but then it started to erode very rapidly and they decided the best thing to do was to rebury it again. Which is likely how it'll stay until they can expose it without it decaying so rapidly again.

All the creeks and rivers today seemed unusually high and muddy!

One of many honesty boxes on the trail today! I'm not really sure why this guy even bothered given the much better honesty sheds and snack bars I passed so often today!