First, a special guest appearance by Very Good Dog Alan, my pal at yesterday’s B&B:

Today’s short walk from Gilsland to Walton (just eight miles) marked a temporary parting of the ways. Rob’s blistered foot was giving him enough trouble that he decided to take a day off to let it heal. There is bus service, so we worked out a simple plan—he would forge ahead on public transit and rest at our next bed and breakfast.

It’s always hard when a walking trip gets disrupted like this, especially when the best solution is for one person to take time off and use transit while others walk on. I’ve taken days off a few times in the past, including a memorable stretch of the South Downs Way after a day of heat exhaustion, when a bus for a day felt like the only option. What I remember is a sense of relief from the dread of how hard that next day of walking would be, sadness at missing a day, and gratitude when, at the end of the day, Tracy very kindly did not rave too much about how awesome the day had been. Rob has taken his painful blister on the pad of his foot below his toes, where his foot hits with every stride, with amazing sangfroid. So he just shrugged last night and said “It’s best for me to take the day off. I researched the buses, and here’s the plan.”

So, Tracy, Karen and I set off for a short walk to the Birdoswald National Trust site museum, where we had vowed to stop and appreciate the preserved fort, rather than bolt through as we did at Housesteads a few days ago. After crossing a pretty footbridge across a river, almost losing the path at one badly marked turning, and discovering that we’ve arrived in sufficient warmth and lower country to get big persistent flies buzzing around, we arrived at Birdoswald. We knew it opens at 10am, so we had tried to dawdle, but dawdling is not a Sartin character trait unless it can be used to annoy each other (kidding!), so we had to sit and relax for about 25 minutes before the place opened.

Reader, it was worth it. While Housesteads has impressive ruins and feels like an archaeological site, Birdoswald has been turned into an educational site aimed at the whole family. The signage is written to, let’s say, a fifth grade level, which turns out to be all we really wanted and needed. A short video of perhaps three minutes helped us to better visualize how high the Wall probably was and what it would have looked like when it was intact across the landscapes we have been traversing for days. The signs and activities around the ruins engaged us just enough to have some fun and, gasp, learn something. For example, the forts were big enough to have musicians as part of the regiment, so there were people who played horns and a sort of xylophone chime (the modern slightly fancified version made for much hilarity at a moment when we were grateful that there was no one else yet wandering the ruins).

We did have one crucial task to complete at Birdoswald. Our day’s walk ends at Walton, but the nearest B&B that could handle us is in Brampton, a few miles away, so our tour company had arranged for a taxi to collect us at the end of the day at our stopping point. I’ve done this before, and it always works out, but you have to call and give an ETA when you start out. Since we weren’t sure how long we’d spend at Birdoswald (given our behavior at Housesteads, we knew the answer could approach zero minutes… which of course it didn’t, what with all the chime playing and Roman-armor-cutout posing and whatnot), we had decided to call from Birdoswald, when we’d have a better estimate of our time of arrival on Walton’s village green. After a few false starts with the international dialing (do not ask me to explain why in some cases I’ve needed to dial 011 for international to start a call, and in other cases not on my cellphone), I got through to the taxi service, only to be informed that because school is still in session until July, and the taxi service in this small town does some work picking up and dropping off special needs students, there was no way to get picked up between 2pm and 4pm. So, with seven miles or so to go at 10:30am, we could either boogie and try to make it in time to call for a pre-2pm pickup from Walton, or get to Walton anytime after around 1:30 and get stuck waiting on the green of a town with one tea shop and a church, where we’d hang out until after 4pm.

If this were a more dramatic trip, I’d write something like “Thus began our longest journey together…” (a line in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Jem and Scout set out for home on a dark night, that I still remember giving me chills when I first read it) and something would follow to thrill the hearts and minds of my gentle readers.

Instead, I will say that the prospect of two hours spent waiting on a village green when all you want is to get to your bed and breakfast focuses the mind wonderfully. We hit a prodigious walking pace, aided by the fact that we have moved out of the hard hills of the middle section, where the trail plunges and big stones are often laid on the trail as rustic staircases, to rolling farmland. This is not to say that we didn’t have some steep hills, but they were hills we could still climb at a solid walking pace, not ‘ascents’ that we undertook.

Along the way, we stopped at a perfectly located “honesty shop,” where a farmer has set up a little shack with a mini-fridge of cold drinks. You take something and leave the money in a box. And we took time out there to text Rob, who reported that he had been successful on the buses and had made it to the B&B. He texted “I’m at the hotel (um, wow, pretty) kicking back and not moving for a while.” This led to much discussion over whether “um, wow, pretty” was sincere or ironic. Oddly, we didn’t think to simply call him, which would have made his tone clear.

It’s beautiful country, tamer and more populated than the last few days of walking, and we could often see farmhouses near the trail, something less common in the previous three days. Our determination paid off—we made it to Walton’s village green at 1:10 and I immediately called the taxi. The taxi driver was both amazed at our speed and oddly discouraging about it (“Well, I can’t promise your rooms will be ready when I get you there…”, to which I very graciously did NOT reply “What darn business is it of yours?! Our brother is there and in his room already. Just get me there!” Instead I said something anodyne like “We’ll sort it out”)

This taxi is also our way back to the trail in the morning, and our directions had said that we would need to make arrangements for a pickup time. The tour company had noted that there is morning school pickup (they’d somehow missed those afternoon pickups, but at least knew there was a morning problem) and warned that we’d either need to be able to go before 8am or have to wait until perhaps 9:30. So we were a bit annoyed to learn upon getting in the taxi and opening the discussion of pickup time that the taxi service was completely booked for the before-8 slots, so we’d have to wait until 9:30am, which was the general time indicated in the reservation that the company had made.

I think she sensed that this was not happy news, because she averred that she could probably get to our bed and breakfast by just a bit after 9am. And as we got closer, she tried to make amends for the bad news by noting that there is a nice church and some shops in Brampton and we might want to stroll down to the village this afternoon. Then she drove us past our bed and breakfast and into town for a quick tour so we could see what is in Brampton, in case we wanted an afternoon stroll. It’s a nice little town, and Tracy, Karen and I did in fact walk into town for a little tourism (postcards, quick visit to see the church’s stained glass), but the thing that really lifted our mood is our bed and breakfast, a lovely Victorian house “with grounds,” where the hostess offers an incredible array of dinner choices that made us decide with little discussion not to dine in town and to eat here.

Our evening meal was amazing (If you’re ever staying at the Oakwood Park Hotel, let me recommend the sweet potato, chick pea and spinach curry) and we are all very relaxed. Rob is going to take another day off so that he can definitely be able to walk the final stretch with us on Saturday.