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The guide book did not lie - today's walk was truly magnificent.... but before I get to that....
Our first challenge this morning was figuring out the shower. While all have been a bit tricky to run, this morning's shower was a head scratcher. Tom went first, and then had to give lessons to the rest of us. First, pay no attention to the hot and cold water spigots above the tub. Using "control central", choose high, med, or low (which one would think was water temperature, but it was actually water pressure). However, most places have instant heat for water, so, the pressure actually does impact temperature quite a bit (less pressure, hotter water - more pressure, colder water). Which brings us to the dial, which then fine tunes the temperature once you have chosen a pressure. Whew. Ok - got it. But why won't the shower turn on? This brings us to the unmarked string hanging from the ceiling between the shower and the sink - yep, seems you have to pull that to get the water to turn on (sure glad I didn't go first - I would still be trying to figure this out).
4 showers down and then we headed back to the main route to begin today's walk in Chollerfield. (Truth be told we caught a cab to get us back to the main route vs. trying to find our way up there again - based on how well we did yesterday, and the added miles to do this - it seemed to be a very good move).
We had heard that there was pretty much nowhere to stop today, so we ducked into the small gas station in town and grabbed some munchies for the walk. This is where we overheard the attendant speaking with one of the locals about an "incident" that occurred this morning. Seems that a farmer very close to the gas station woke up to find one of his goats on his front lawn with it's throat ripped wide open. They were passing the word to each other to be on the lookout for a large wild dog (which we immediately translated to "werewolf"). Oh, did I mention that there is little to nothing/no one along our planned path today... and that we recently had a full moon?? We all had brief flashes of the movie An American Werewolf in London. Armed with our walking sticks for protection, we headed on our way....
The next stamp location was pretty close - it was at Chester's Roman Fort. Unfortunately, it didn't open for a few hours, so we only got to take a quick peek at the site. After this point, there was a large amount of remaining wall to be seen today - along with turrets, temples, and other significant sites. Lots of photo opportunities and signs to read along the way.
A few hours into our walk, we stopped for a bit to rest our feet and eat our gas station goodies (crisps - aka potato chips, cookies and sodas - wonder what the romans would say?). We saw some other hikers approaching from the distance, and they turned out to be the 2 Canadians (father/son) we met earlier on in the walk. They saw us and began with a loud cheer of "USA!, USA!" to which we replied in song, "Oh, Can-ah-DAH...." (pause, as apparently none of us knew the words... but then continued).... "La, la, la, la, la, LAHHH". (Funny thing is that we met them on the walk at least 5 times before we finally exchanged names - Canada and USA seemed to work just fine).
Today's walk had a lot of hills and valleys and truly breath taking vistas.... but the best by far was finding the "Robin Hood Tree".
The Robin Hood Tree - back story:
Beginning with our first cab ride with Paul (seems so long ago now), when anyone in the UK heard we were walking Hadrian's Wall, they would excitedly say, "oh, you're going to see the Robin Hood tree!". (The "Robin Hood Tree"??) Apparently in the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (the 90's movie with Kevin Costner), they film a few scenes on Hadrian's Wall at a tree that is now dubbed "the Robin Hood tree" by folks who live there. While we all remembered seeing this movie many years ago, no one can quite remember what the tree looks like, but we were keeping a keen eye out for it. And when I say we, I mean Tom. It became a mission for him. Since the first day, every time Tom saw a large tree, or a very unique tree, or a tree in the middle of nowhere (you get the idea), he would say, "is THAT the Robin Hood tree"? This would happen a minimum of 10 times a day. Minimum.
This afternoon, after leaving the impressive Housesteads Fort, the boys went ahead of the girls - agreeing to meet up at our overnight destination. So, needless to say Becky and I were surprised to see the boys waiting for us at the top of a hill. As soon as they saw us, Tom proudly (and theatrically) announced, "I give you............ The Robin Hood Tree!". We looked down into the valley where he pointed, and it was unmistakable - we had finally found it - and it was incredible.
There was a pretty large crowd there as we headed down the steep path to the tree itself, but once we arrived, we had the location all to ourselves. We stayed a while to take some pictures and, of course, joust a bit before heading up the steep hill to the other side and leave The Robin Hood Tree behind us. Soon after this we made it to our destination - the Twice Brewed Pub and B&B - where we had a few pints with Canada (who arrived just before us and were leaving to their B&B shortly), enjoyed a surprisingly fancy meal, ran outside to catch pictures of a great sunset, and headed up to bed.
We all agreed, it was definitely the best Hadrian's day yet.
Stats: Today - 13 miles (felt like a whole lot more with all of the large hills!!), 48 miles total, about 1/2 way there!
p.s. added some video clips today - seems they are a bit bouncy...
- comments
Brianne Seems like a good day :-/.