Border Walk Day 1 Carlisle to Longtown

The first day of this epic of sore feet and comedy waymarking should carry some kind of subtitle about Adam and Eve and King Arthur. This may well become clear later.
Or possibly not.

I started with a pie. It was a steak and onion from a Carlisle pie shop and it was very hot and very nice. It was about the time that I’d burned my tongue for the third time (hunger/greed/impatience) and just before I arrived at the fountain in the underpass by the Sands Centre that it started raining. In fact it bounced down. This was to set a pattern. I put on full waterproofs. This was to set another pattern. I wandered off on the riverbank. The river was the River Eden. It leads to the Solway, which is where I was going.
The day was one of rain then fairly heavy but short showers. I got fairly wet.

The walk along by the River Eden is very easy. It has just the one short shock of an uphill but in general it flows through cow pastures (with cows) on a easy grassy path with no contours to disturb the rhythm. At one point it does go through a marsh, where the line of the path and the line of the river and the mapping thereof bear no relation at all to each other, but in general, it arrives at Rockcliffe, where one of the local cattle was busy eating the cricket pitch and where I was greeted enthusiastically by a border collie puppy, with little in the way of excitement or effort.

I pushed Eastwards on lanes, crossing the M6 and joining Cycle Route Number 7 for a short section of pleasant railway path – and thence to Arthuret Church.

Arthuret Church is supposed to stand on the site of a sixth century church which possibly involved some post-Roman British Vortigern/Arthur type of anti-English warlord and Christian to boot. It is now a very large medieval church with an incredibly crowded graveyard, and, just a little along the scarp, an ancient well dedicated to St Michael, the Patron saint of lady’s sandwiches and upper middle class underwear.

It wasn’t too far through cow and horse pastures, complete with you-know-whats to the Border township of Longtown.
This has a bloody history including two 16th century battlesites and general Border lawlessness and more, organised general warfare involving large armies. There was no evidence of this in the Graham Arms (Grahams being one of the local reiver clans) and I had the steak pie and some beer and repaired to my B&B for a lie down. This would be my only B&B of the trip.
It was 15 and a half miles and about 500 feet of uphill if you’re really really careful about counting all of the contours.

Hadrians Wall Day 6 Carlisle to Bowness on Solway

After earning some good boy points by painting things, Maggie suggested that she’d like to visit her pal in Carlisle and then go shopping and if I wanted, she’d drop me off in Carlisle and pick me up again at the end.
So, she left me at the Sands Centre in Carlisle and I marched manfully Eastwards towards the final end (or the start, perhaps) of Hadrians Wall
This last section is reasonably pleasant and has at least three pubs, so its civilised too, if a bit hazy…
There’s a riverside path, then some cow fields with cows, a long, straight road with signposts whoch tell you how deep the water is when the tide comes in (3 feet at the most – so you shouldn’t drown) – and then, that’s basically it. You’re at the end with a pint of mild in your hand.
The locals are remarkably friendly, and quite a few had a nice greeting or a joke about the summer (it finally arrived at about 1:00 pm today). This must be a happy locality. The Solway coast is certainly a bit stark and beautiful. But there’s a certain relaxed sort atmosphere about the villages. You won’t get mugged here.
And the hedgerows are now absolutely heaving with berries and fruit of all kinds.
So I had a healthy, grazing sort of walk till I got to the Greyhound at Burgh by Sands where I spoiled it all by drinking several foaming pints of Black Sheep.
Outside the boozah, there were five men from Kent and a statue of Edward I with a sword. He died near here, apparently, just on his way to hammer the Scots once again, but leaving the job to his foppish son Edward II who buggerred it all up at Bannockburn and then, due to some other buggerry, was murdered with a red hot poker in exactly the place you don’t want a red hot poker.
None of this is at all relevant to this walk.
Maggie appeared just before Bowness on Solway and we went off to caldbeck for a nice dinner at the pub there.
And now we’re home.
14 miles and virtually no ascent at all – it’s a bit rolling at the most and often quite, quite flat.

So that’s Hadrians Wall eh? Two flat bits and a bumpy bit in the middle. It’s a good walk. Its very popular. You should enjoy it. Go do it. Buy the maps now and larn Geordie.

Anybody know what the mushroom is by the way?