On to Heddon

Wednesday, July 9th, was a 10 mile walk to Heddon. It would have been a 15 mile walk if we hadn't done the 5 mile walk the day before. Fifteen miles on our first day out would have been a killer.

On Wednesday morning, we took the metro to where we'd left off the trail the evening before. From here, we walked along the Tyne River – past the rest of Newcastle, office buildings, car dealerships, etc. Once, we got lost by (my) ignoring a trail sign and going way the heck out of our way up the A1. A nice postie straightened us out - plus we asked directions a couple more times! After getting back on the trail, we sat in the grass of a field/park to eat lunch. Walking farther along the river, we saw swans swimming and a lovely recreation area.



Approaching Heddon, we turned up the hill to go to our bed and breakfast, but Joan decided to go further up the river path to check out George Stephenson’s cottage. The rest of us cut across a golf course (Fore!) and trudged, trudged, trudged up to our B&B, the Heddon Lodge.
Our hostess, Jacqueline Ryan, let us collapse in her patio furniture and brought us out hot tea and KitKat bars – it all tasted wonderful! Our room was very, very nice. Ms. Jacqueline said she had rented out her home to a Newcastle football (read “soccer”) player and his family, who had utterly trashed the place. Jacqueline had obviously put a lot of home improvement time in since then.
Joan finally arrived around 5:30 or 6 – she hadn’t been able to find the B&B. (This would not be the last time we’d have difficulty finding our lodging…) Then we went for dinner at the Swan Carvery. The vegetables were cooked almost beyond recognition. (Also not the last time…)
The following morning, Ms. Jacqueline cooked and served us breakfast, then left for work...
...and we left for Chollerford/Wall.

(Postie photo from Joan's smugmug page . All other photos taken by Kathie.)

Start of the Trail

This is the first installment of my notes dump from the Hadrian's Wall trek...

On Tuesday, July 8th, we took the train to Newcastle, England, which was a two hour ride from Edinburgh, and then the metro to Hadrian’s Lodge Hotel at Wallsend. The “hotel” was a little dumpy but the folks were nice. We walked to lunch at a local pub, where the guys at the bar said “GEEZ!” when I told them we’re doing the trail in seven days. (Kathie’s comment – “Loved the pubs!”)
After lunch, we visited the reconstructed wall portion across the street from Segedunum. Segedunum was a fort, the layout of which is on the ground. It was kinda hard to imagine what the actual fort was like.
Then we walked five miles along the Tyne river, where there were lots of wild flowers – foxglove, thistles, stinging nettle (OUCH!). Tetsu did lots of sneezing; Hisako snapped lots of flower pics.
Finally, we came to Newcastle. On the river is a pedestrian bridge that the locals call the “winking eye” – the semicircular pedestrian walkway arcs up to “close” on the superstructure archway to let river traffic through. Quite cool.
This is just one of about seven or eight bridges in this smallish city. On the other side of the river is the Sage Gateshead, a center for musical education, performance and conferences, which struck me as a glass version of the sandworms in the Dune trilogy. Weird but nifty.We hiked up to the castle, then on to find dinner at a little Greek restaurant called Café Neon. Quite good it was, too! Afterward, we walked to the metro station for a train back to the lodge. There were oodles and gobs of flowers in front of the train station – most impressive. Why can't we have flowers in front of our train stations?