371.1 kms: Low Rigg-Haytongate Hut-Banks-Birdoswald-Greenhead.

I saw the Pennine Way again today, doing what only the Pennine Way can do, coming vertically down a mountain. So now I am on both routes for a bit. I did a very bad thing though. Very, very bad. My room for the night is quite large (youth hostel booked out—possibly by the large group of elderly Germans who just stormed the pub) and so I opened up all the remaining maps I have all the way to Edinburgh and laid them out. I see, in my future, another trip to the UK in order to finish LeJog. I am mortified. I really did think I would finish it this time. I keep trying to sing to myself a mantra about LeJog and JogLe taking three months if you can manage to stick to a straight line but I do still feel a little defeated. Having looked at maps stretching across a large B&B room, I start to wonder if I'll even make it to Edinburgh!! Can you all start thinking about another 'b' based theme for me please. Although I did already, when someone else poo-poo-ed my finishing earlier on my journey, ask V—— if he would like to come if I did it again so it may simply be 'Bifurcating Britain (begrudgingly) with the Boy and a bedraggled Beaver'. Maybe this time we can do what all the others do—drive the car to the end point each day, catch a bus to the start point and walk to the car and then drive to find accommodation; or; get the luggage delivered place to place, although in the middle of Scotland I think that service may become increasingly difficult to find. 

Okay, the terrible, terrible part over, I will turn to something lighter. There was a part of me that thought Hadrian's Wall would be like Offa's Dyke—a grass covered lump that accompanies the path. I was walking along with Tracey and Annette for a little bit (doing the wall in seven days, camping the whole way). Shortly after they pointed out that I had a large tree branch hanging from the back of my trousers (the countryside version of trailing toilet paper from tucked in tights), they pointed out the first 'official' spotting of the wall along the track. It was messy and crumbly, but definitely wall-ish and two thousand years old. But it got better. Soon it was Romanly straight walls and forts and turrets all over the place. I started walking past them, saying to Wesley: 'Another bit of ancient history on your left'.

 

Twenty k's was a hard one though (despite my apparent giving up of pledges) because there was really nothing, accommodation wise, between fifteen and thirty and so I settled for the former. Actually between fifteen and what appeared to be thirty. I am back on my lovely informative Pennine Way guide and it states that the next section (which, it turns out, starts in Greenhead and finishes in Steel Rigg) has accommodation options in Once Brewed and Twice Brewed which is where I thought thirty k's would be, but the guide gives the distance as only ten k's—albeit, ten k's of knee-testing ups and downs. The two days afterwards are long and facilities-poor and so I am going, pledge-be-damned, to have a late start/short day tomorrow and just stop at either one of the Breweds. Do some washing, enjoy the rain. If it happens: cloudy and seventeen was a morning thing only today; the afternoon was sunshine filled and sweaty. To the point where I accused some people of looking at my redness—it's my blood vessel's proximity to the surface of my skin, I can't help going this colour when the temperature goes over freezing and I move at least one muscle, stop staring at me!

 

The photo in the photo is the photo everyone has of the wall. Chances are, when I see that vista, I will not have my iPad out to take the real thing and so this will have to suffice.

 

I cannot tell you how popular Wesley is. Everyone loves him. Everyone asks about him. Everyone questions whether he is part of the 'I only have things, in this huge pack you have just commented on, that are absolutely essential' delusion. Tracey, mentioned earlier, asked me if I had weighed my bag. 'Fourteen kilos about', I said, hastely adding 'but everything I have is absolutely essential'. She replied: 'Yeah, mine was thirteen, but when I added my platypus [people get him confused] it went up to fourteen'. I think Tracey was being sarcastic. And Tracey, when challenged, was unable to produce said platypus. Are people mocking me today?

 

Met a group of autistic kids doing the walk for 'Help for Heroes'. They were lovely. And they are on Facebook if you want to see how they are doing!!! Gosh, what a trip for them and their carers. Lots and lots of people on the walk today though—it's just hi, hi, hi, all day long.

 

I'll leave you with a little of the Latin I have been learning. See if you can work it out without just popping the whole phrase into a Google search:

Unitam barbari spatioum proprium tuum invadant.

Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

Unitam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.

 

Good night to Greenhead, good night to you.