Not a spectacular sightseeing day, mainly fields and moorland, but eventually you get the historic Hadrian's Wall to see. I had Liz drop me off at Burnstones, the place I done a short walk to, from Alston yesterday. It was straightaway into fields with long wet grass, a bit boggy underfoot in places, helping to get my boots wet. Crossing a road near to Lambley, it was then onto Hartleyburn Common, then Blenkinsopp Common which as a reputation as being the worst area for bogs on the Pennine Way. Must have been my lucky day, there was less bog and wetness than a few miles earlier that I'd walked through. Coming off the common by Black Hill I did find navigation a bit of a problem, the track just disappears, use of a gps signal on my phone then gave me coordinates to check on my OS map, problem solved.
I then had the job of crossing the busy A69, when your feet and legs are tiring you need to wait for a pretty long gap in the traffic. After I had got across, the next thing was to navigate around Haltwhistle golf club, no problem, but if you somehow don't go over the stiles you have to, you can spend a bit of time getting back to the correct place. What a bloody idiot, for the life of me I just don't know what I was doing. I lost a good half an hour back and forward, going in a circle before I realised what a bloody silly thing I'd done. In fact when I caught up with Liz later in the afternoon, who keeps an eye on my progress and whereabouts using something called "Buddy Beacon" on the View Ranger app, she happened to mention to me, "Who went backwards and forwards and got lost about 1-00PM". Sod off Liz, can't hide anything, besides I never get lost, I don't always know where I am.
Things then got alright, easily picking up the PW trail alongside Hadrian's Wall track, soon came across a picnic area where I stopped for my lunch. Then it was roughly 3 to 4 miles along the wall path, up then down, up then down, like a roller coaster until I reached a lane to take me to our b&b for the night,
A few random photos of todays walk
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| Stiles that walkers love |
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| Thirlwell Castle |
