Day 48: The South Tyne Trail

Distance: 15.1 miles
Sponsors: the letter W, and the number 5
Yesterday evening Dawn's red eye came back, so we walked to the local town hospital to have it looked at. The Ruth Lancaster James hospital is just
Iike the community hospital in Downton Abbey, except without Matthew's super annoying mother running about. The nurse seemed very competent, looking in Dawn's eyes with a little flashlight, and asking many questions. She couldn't come up with anything, and advised we come back in the morning to see a doctor. We did. In the morning, I stayed in the waiting room and chatted with Michael Caine's illegitimate son (he had what sounded to me like a Caine accent, and looked a bit like Caine, so I just assumed the rest). Dawn went to see the doctor; she trusted him because of his tweed jacket and wirerim spectacles. He ruled out all the potential bad stuff, and concluded that probably something mysterious had just irritated that eye. Maybe two days of strong cold wind blowing on that side while walking. He thought it would likely improve on its own, and, as of now, that seems to be happening. Later, Dawn briefly consulted with Dr Crazy Horn and his colleagues; they also agreed that the eye was going to be ok.




Having lived in America for 18 years, we've been trained that to see a doctor you need to fill out pages and forms, and go through long debates with your insurance company. It was a pleasure being back in a country where there seems to be more effort put into taking care of you than in filling out paperwork. We asked about payment, and they just waved us out and told us to have a nice walk. Thank you, English doctors, for being there when we needed you! We'd hate to rely solely on these fat head sheep for medical help.




The doctor visit added a couple of miles this morning (to and from the hospital) and set us up with a late start. So we revised our route to compensate. Instead of taking the Pennine Way 15 miles northwest to Hadrian's Wall, we carved off a couple of miles and walked 13 miles on the South Tyne Trail northeast to the town of Haltwhistle, stopping a couple of miles short of the Wall. And instead of walking up and down over rocky ground and bogs on the Pennine Way, we spent the whole day today on a rails to trails conversion project. For the first half, we walked next to a restored small gauge track where they pull cars of tourists behind steam engines.




Unfortunately, the engines were not running today. The picture above was taken yesterday, when we arrived at Alston. Even though it was the end of the day, when I saw a steam engine pulling in I ran through through the station so I could get a picture. The nameplate on this cute little blue engine says "Helen Kathryn". I can just hear Sir Toppam Hatt: "Helen, you have done excellent work today pulling all those children back and forth". "You are a very useful engine!". Helen beamed with delight.




We saw lots of signs along the tracks as we walked along. Inexplicably, most of them were either this sign




Or this one




Always five, always W.




After a few miles, the track ended, but the walking path continued. I think it's safe to say that we enjoyed the easy walking and pleasant country side of our path more than we would have enjoyed the wilder Pennine Way path over bogs and rocks. There's plenty who seek out the most challenging possible way to get from place to place, and it seems the Pennine Way is made for those people. Us, we enjoy being able to look around, and talk with each other, and not be always worried about breaking our ankles or filling our boots with muck.




The big highlight of the day was Dawn's clean bill of eye-health. Second was the 300 yard long, 100 foot high Lambley viaduct.




I just can't get enough of this sort of Victorian engineering. The viaduct carried trains from 1852 till 1976. After almost 20 years of neglect and decay, it was renovated in 1996 and now carries walkers like us.




We walked the trail right to the end, where it dumped us out a short stroll to our B&B. Turned out that switching up the route not only gave us an easy trail, and a shorter day, but we also ended up with some pretty sweet place to stay. So everything is working out.




Tomorrow is a piece of the walk I've been looking forward to for months: 10 miles along Hadrian's Wall. The bad news is that the weatherman is telling us to expect strong winds and pelting rain. We'll watch the weather radar and try to time our departure to avoid the worst of it.

Location:Lanty's Lonnen, Haltwhistle, United Kingdom