Day 2

 It wasn't supposed to rain. But at around 6am, as I lay in my tent, I heard the unmistakable pitter patter on the tent.

If I'd been about to get in the car and drive off, I would have enjoyed the experience but the snug and cosy feeling which that sound can illicit was tempered by the knowledge that fairly soon i would have to pack up in it. I tried working out how to roll up mats and stuff sleeping bags into their impossibly small bags within the confines of a one-man tent. (I use the word man loosely)

By the time I did get up the rain had stopped but the tent was soaking. I unpegged it and gave it an impressive sounding shake. Admittedly the other occupants of the site had yet to emerge but they had been quite evident through the evening and one man (sorry to assume it was a man) snored from before 10:30 until about 7:30 without omitting a single snored inhalation as far as I was aware.

I imagined it would be more or less down to Penrith for breakfast. When will I learn not to imagine things? I went through a little village high up and noticed a sign with a bike and it was entitled "Wiggo's Way". On closer inspection, I discovered that it really was Sir Bradley Wiggins along with Mark Cavendish who had donated the plaque to the local pub. A local favourite perhaps? I'm guessing that one or both of them lived within the locality.

Once I had completed the 10 miles to Penrith, I was ready for breakfast. First I was compelled to follow the route which Kate and I had taken as part of our end to end ride. It was funny seeing the exact bench that we had sat on to eat lunch. I took a photo of it, which a passerby really wasn't ready for. He apologised for walking in front of me as I prepared to capture this extraordinarily monument. I had imagined that Penrith would boast a plethora of coffee shops. Dam that imagination of mine. I was early to be fair. I settled for a Greg’s and asked for a bap with a couple of sausages in it. She made me two, despite the fact that I was clearly on my own. When I explained that I had asked for two sausages, she looked affronted and said that they came with three sausages. Having less is rarely an option these days. Large, Kingsize and Jumbo, as my Dad says.

I left Penrith slightly disappointed. I think it was the combination of nothing but a Greg’s, with it’s ‘meh’ coffee and seeing a place which Kate and I had tandem cycled through on our end to end adventures the year before. I went over a speed bump as I left the town and found myself shouting “Bump!” as I went over it, to warn Kate on the back of the tandem…

I was aware that today, I didn’t really cycle through anywhere much. It was mostly quite remote. Still, I had three sausages and a coffee inside me, so surely nothing else was required. About half an hour later, I found myself cycling through the improbably named village of Langwathby. There, in the middle of the village green was a stall boasting the provision of speciality coffees. I told the man selling the coffee that I had already had a coffee at Greg’s. He assured me that a coffee from Greg’s just doesn’t count. Encouraged by this confirmation of what I already suspected; I ordered a coffee. There were little tables and chairs set up over the green. The one I sat at had a chess board on it with pieces ready to do battle with each other. I wasn’t hoping to have a game with an innocent passerby, it was just the only unoccupied table. There was a lone cyclist sat at the next table and, emboldened by the seeming culture of everyone speaking to everyone, I went over and talked to him. He was reading a map. I said how I missed using a real map and he told me how you can’t get a proper sense of where you are without one – the very reason I give for my love of a map. He was on his way to see a friend further north and was creating the route as he went. There’s spontaneity.

I set off from Langwathby feeling like I had drunk a bit too much coffee. It’s never a great feeling but it wears off quickly enough. The direction of my route was up. Both in going north and gaining altitude. At one point in a village called Renwick, the route tried taking me along a nasty rough looking track. I was having none of it. I could see a proper road running more or less parallel so opted for that. By the time I reached the tiny hamlet of Croglin, high up in the hills, I was tired. After looking for a bench in the sun, and failing, I stopped by a gate to a field which was in the sun. There I feasted on half a sausage roll which I had bought the day before, some emergency flapjack which I had brought from home and a rather odd yoghurt type thing which I bought from the last Co-op because it had pictures of cyclists on it. Upon closer examination, this pot claimed to contain all that is good for people who run or cycle with nothing naughty. I experienced a rise of self-righteousness for eating something so wholesome and hoped that it would also aid further progress.

When looking for watering holes before setting off, I had noticed a café at a garden centre called the White Rabbit Tea Room. It was shortly before the small town of Brampton and just passed a large tarn with the wonderful name of “Talkin Tarn”. I never saw the tarn but I did spy the tea room. The claim to be a garden centre was perhaps a little hopeful but there was a very quaint tea shop in a little hut with tables and chairs outside, surrounded by a pretty little garden. The cakes all looked so amazing that I had difficulty choosing. I told him that I wanted all twenty sorts and he told me that it could be arranged but in the end I went for a piece of rocky road. It was so big that I ate half and wrapped half up for later.

And so on into Brampton proper. The sun was out and I know that always makes places look nicer, but Brampton was a nice town to wander round. I had time to wander so I locked the bike wandered. Even now, I was still so ‘coffeed’ that I was not looking for a coffee shop. Rare. Instead, I set about buying provender for the evening meal. I knew that there were no shops where I was camping so it was here or nowhere. I bought some pre-cooked chicken, a couscous salad and a few crusty rolls. Then I sat and watched the world go by. After a while, I started to get that wonderfully drowsy, I would love a little nap, feeling. I still had plenty of miles and climbs to get in. Time to go.

I didn’t have to travel much further north to reach the point, had I been around in Roman times, I would have reached the Scottish border. Suddenly there were signs everywhere and the feeling that I had come out of obscurity and arrived somewhere. I then started to notice little heaps of stones with well presented notices by them. These were the remains of Hadrian’s wall. There were plaves where the wall was somewhat more in tact than others but the height of the wall never reached above about five feet as far as I could see. Still, this didn’t deter ever so many walkers from faithfully following the route. Most of them seemed to be following the wall from west to east. Better for wind direction, I suppose.

The campsite I planned to stay at was very close to the wall so I spent a good six miles cycling in a very straight line towards it. The Romans certainly were good at their straight lines but I wonder if they sometimes found the journey psychologically difficult as I did today. When you see the road stretching off in front of you without distraction until it disappears over the horizon, it’s easy to lose heart. I got to the point where I was pleading with the road to yield and offer me tonight’s destination. Surely it must be just over the next hill? The next one, then? My legs had had enough.

My destination was the fantastically named village of “Once Brewed”. It is a name which greatly amuses me. The cherry on the top was the name of the pub in this village: Twice Brewed! To be honest, the name of the village and indeed the pub, were the most engrossing aspects to the area. It was a bleak, wind swept terrain without even a view of the famous wall. I shudder at the thoughts of camping here in the winter. But then the campsite owner probably closes over winter, He told me that, if it wasn’t for the regular D of E groups that stay, he would have closed permanently anyway. I congratulated him on being another direct beneficiary of Prince Philip’s Do of E initiative. I loved the reception arrangements at this site. You go up to the window with reception written above it and there is a hand drawn biro map on A4 paper. It has an outline of the two fields which the site boasts and on each it says, “Camp Here.” Then at the bottom of the paper there is an arrow and the words, “Pub this way.” That’s about it. Ah, would that life was always so simple!

Flat ground was not one of this site’s boasts, however, and it took me quite a while to find a patch of ground that I thought I might not slip out of bed on. I was one of the earliest to arrive so I had the pick of the land. Tent up and stove out, I was soon making a cuppa. One feature of this site that I loved was the free adornment of tree stumps which were spread out over the fields. This may not cause much excitement to ‘normal’ campers but when you have no seat or table of place to set your stove, or surface to keep things off wet grass they are highly cherished artifacts. Well, they were by me anyway. I noticed that other campers weren’t bothered about them. There was a woman camping quite nearby who was stumpless. With a pang of guilt, I realised that I had hogged three of them and was just about to offer her a stump – as you do – when I noticed that there were some right be her which remained unemployed. Honestly, some people are just weird….

Having eaten my chicken and bread and a rather naughtier yoghurt than the previous evening, the only reasonable course of action, I felt, was to investigate the Twice Brewed pub. It was busy. Full of people walking the wall. There were young and old, but mostly young, and it was noisy. I found myself a relatively quiet spot and nursed a pint of the beer they brew on the premises. 

The taste took me back to Boddington days – a brew I often enjoyed as a student in Manchester. I had drunk most of it before an extra noisy family walked in and plonked themselves right next to me with a very large and very smelly dog. I’m afraid that did it for me. Two minutes later, I was on my bike for the half a mile ride back to the site. I enjoyed making another brew and sitting outside my tent – on a stump – looking at the view as the sun set at the west end of the long valley which Hadrian had deemed appropriate as a place to draw a line under the Scots. I wonder how the Romans felt about having to come this far north. It’s a long way from Rome and the Italian climate. I imagine they would have preferred to call it a day somewhere around Skipton – before it started getting too hilly and the weather became even more unreliable. Still, whoever actually built the wall will have had his orders. He probably got it in the neck for coming in over-budget as well.

The night was, again, surprisingly comfortable. Not a great deal of sleep but I didn’t really care. It was quiet apart from the odd roar of a car on the adjacent road and I felt like I was nowhere much at all. There are times when that’s very nice place to be.