Preview
Here’s a sample chapter from my book. Just to give you a little taste before you buy…
PROLOGUE
ramble (ram’bl) n. aimless wandering from place to place; an idle stroll. —vi: 1. to roam about; to go from place to place idly. 2. to wander in thought; to talk or write without progress toward a definite conclusion. Syn. prowl, range, roam, rove. – Webster’s Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, copyright 1957
I like to walk, whether to pass the time on a beautiful day or instead of the car for some minor errand, and I guess you could say I come by it honestly. I come from a line of walkers. My earliest memories are of walking with mum and my brother Graham all over the city. My dad used to walk to work at the Canadian National Railway’s Symington Yards. By the time I reached 12 I would readily walk anywhere on my own. In my mid teens, if nothing was happening on a Saturday afternoon, I’d walk downtown. I took part in the 26 mile March for Millions in aid of St. Lucia at 16, wearing sandals as I recall. St. Lucia is a place I have always wanted to visit. I didn’t think twice nor prepare for that walk, just showed up at the starting point and did it. I’d walk back and forth to university in the winter to save on bus fare. Happily the frozen Red River separating my side of the river from the University did cut the travelling distance in half, I sheepishly mention that when crossing the frozen river I always waited for another walker to blaze the trail, just in case.
When the City decided to rebuild the Provencher Bridge in the late 90’s I started parking my car in St. Boniface and walking to work. The realities of the bridge construction were traffic tie ups that drove me mad. I soon found that a nice leisurely saunter each morning and afternoon kept my head clear. I also soon noticed I’d plan my day on the walk into work, and walk off any aggravations at the end of the day. The upside of this 30 minute trip was that half the distance from my office to just over the bridge could be walked quicker than driving. This reduction in aggravation and the feeling of well being it imparted resulted in my keeping up the habit whether rain, shine or snow, even after the new bridge was completed.
It turned out there are walkers on both sides of my English family. My Aunt Sheila never drove -and she continues to walk everywhere. My Uncle Jim and Aunt Moira enjoyed many walking holidays and all their children also walk about quite a bit. Their daughter Julie, and her husband Robb, let us use their country home in the southeast of France for a holiday a few years back and on arrival at the farm cottage we found directions for a number of walking routes in the area on their kitchen table. I note here that what the English consider a walk or a tramp we in Canada would consider a substantial hike. We did a number of the suggested routes and discovered that either we were woefully out of condition or they consistently underestimated the length of time each walk would take.
While I’ve always liked to walk, running is another matter. I took it up in the early 80’s but hated every step of the way. I stuck to it for five years but never enjoyed it.
As thoughts of retirement started creeping up, I considered doing a long walk to cap off my career and reward myself for 30 plus years with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. I initially considered a pilgrimage walk and the famous 30 day northern Spanish walk of St. James or the shorter one to Wallsingham in England were the main contenders. While I had no concerns at all about completing either, the thought of a month walking seemed like too much time away from home. So I decided the Hadrian’s Way walk was the best choice. It turned out I was away for a month anyway but only walked for nine days of it.
I have been aware of Hadrian’s Wall since junior high school because the concept of the Romans building a wall to separate Scotland from England seemed such an incredible feat. I had thought off and on about walking along the Wall since I was a kid. While I cannot say that I studied Hadrian or his Wall in any great detail I seem to have accumulated a lot of knowledge about the ancient relic.
In early 2008 I decided that I would retire on December 31, 2009, the day after my 55th birthday and that I would walk across England the following spring, alongside Hadrian’s Wall. I was to learn along the walk that the terms Hadrian’s Way and Hadrian’s Wall appear to be interchangeable so I make no apologies for either reference going forward. I have tried though, to refer to the walk as the Way and the structure as the Wall throughout.
Once the decision was made to retire, there were never any second thoughts that I would do the walk or concern that I would not complete it once I had started. Initially I felt I would do it alone to avoid having to rely on anyone and so be able to come and go as I pleased. I did mention my plans in passing to a couple of friends and, to my everlasting good fortune Gary Johnson said he would give it a go as well. Gary is a very good friend who I have known and had worked with for years. Gary and his partner Kim have happily holidayed many times together with Lynn and me. He was also planning to retire at the same time as I; in fact you could likely consider that we talked each other into retiring. While I really don’t think Gary knew very much about the Wall, the idea of a tramp to celebrate the end of a long career seemed to fit his purpose as well. During the walk I was thankful daily that Gary was along. He made the trip much more pleasant than if I had been alone. He was, as they used to say in the old days, a boon travelling companion.
So, in mid-2008 we began making plans for a walk in the spring of 2009. Gary pretty much left the sorting of arrangements to me, which suited me just fine.
My first step was to contact my relatives in Hull, Yorkshire, where I was born, to let them know what I was planning. I also let them know that since I was going to be in the neighbourhood I also planned to visit Hull after the walk. Julie and her husband Robb graciously forwarded information on the Wall walk to me including a magazine that further whetted Gary’s interest. These articles told us that the final right of ways for the entirety of the Way had only been completed a year or two previously, much to our luck.
That Christmas I received a number of gifts to help on the way. My children Erin and Sara and Sara’s husband Colin give me a lovely old-style leather-bound pocket journal. I wrote daily and it formed the backbone of this work. Maureen, my children’s mother, gave me a proper backpack that Sara picked out. Sara had decided that the trusty old canvas pack I’d had for years and which had been on numerous trips was not good enough for the wilds of the north of England. She was right, as it turned out. The girls also gave me a digital camera for my birthday; that turned out to be a great gift. In addition to taking pictures of interesting sights along the way, I also took a picture every hour of the road ahead. Being digital I could take as many pictures as I wanted and not have to fear development costs. I have a slide show of hundreds of pictures of the trip but have culled them down here to a hopefully reasonable number to provide a taste of what we saw. Please appreciate that the pictures presented are in time order and are inserted within the story of each day’s adventure.
I may be showing my age here, but it was truly amazing how the Internet helped with the making of arrangements. Just a couple of key strokes and I had all the information I needed about a Wall walk. I soon had a list of four tour companies that would happily arrange everything for us. This entailed the obvious; reservations for Bed and Breakfasts along the route, and the less obvious, like the daily movement of our luggage from one B&B to the next. They would provide maps, information and suggestions that would prove invaluable along the way. The moving of the luggage was brilliant as it meant we only had to carry whatever we needed for the day’s walk. Left to our own devices we would never have considered this as important.
After due review and consultation with Gary we decided on Contours Walking Holidays. There were numerous options around the length of the walking tour; we ultimately chose 9 days walking and 10 night’s accommodations. This would mean our walk, for which we had various estimates of 72, 84 and 90 miles, would look like an average of nine miles a day. We thought this a reasonable and athletic time. We were right on the first and wrong on the second. We also arbitrarily opted to go from east to west, which apparently 40% of Wall travellers choose. It seemed to us that heading west would have us always heading for home. We decided a late April, early May walk would provide nice spring weather. We also tagged on a five-day stay in London immediately after the walk. Gary would then head home and I would travel on to Hull.
We booked and paid for our Air Canada flights in late winter and then I spent a number of weeks working out ground transportation. I found that trains and buses or coaches as they are known as in England were easily sorted on the Internet and were really quite inexpensive. All our travel arrangements were finalized by January 2009.
I did made one big mistake in our travel plans though.
I had been to Hull a number of times and as there is no international airport I always flew to Manchester via Heathrow. Usually some family member graciously drives the nearly two hours from Hull to pick me up and then later drop me off. Our decision to travel east to west meant that we would start our walk at Newcastle, a seaport on the eastern coast, north of my home port city of Hull. There were no direct flights from Canada to Newcastle, so if landing in Manchester it followed we would need ground transportation. It never crossed my mind that there could be a regional air carrier so I looked for ground transport from Manchester. The Manchester Airport also houses a train station and coach terminal and is a beautiful facility. There was a train scheduled to leave Manchester Airport for the one and-a-half hour trip to Newcastle, but it departed within minutes of our arriving flight so a coach trip appeared the only option. I online booked us passage on a coach scheduled to leave within a couple of hours of our arrival, and while cheap it was a six hour trip.
A few days into the trip we discovered there was a regional flight to Newcastle from Heathrow that we could have taken and thus avoided Manchester altogether.
Gary and I (both out of work by this time, retired not fired) each undertook to train for our Grand Tour. My training starting after Christmas involved little more than a five mile walk two or three times a week. I had a pair of Blundstone pull-on boots that I thought would work quite nicely and so figured I was set. About a month before the trip I received some advice from my Sara that going up and down hills might prove problematic with pull-on boots, lace-tied boots would allow give and take when moving up and down the hills we were expecting. So I went out and bought a pair of hiking boots. I actually tried on about five pairs before I chose the ones I ended up with. Trying on multiple pairs of shoes was a new process in my life. I usually eyeball the pair I want and buy them. The boots were a perfect fit and I continued training with no ill effects. I also picked a few items for the trip like waterproof wind pants and a fishing vest with numerous pockets that I thought would come in handy. The wind pants were invaluable; the vest, not so much.
As the big day was fast approaching I started practice packing. I had initially hoped to pack just one bag and use my backpack as carry on, but there was just way too much stuff. It took six or seven sessions using various different bags before I was satisfied. I ended up with two bags with the backpack stuffed into one of them. I was hopeful that I could magically reduce volume over the course of the trip and pack one bag in the other and then use the backpack as carry on for the trip home. I know it does not make sense, nor can I explain it, but that is in fact what happened. Strangely, Gary and I each independently packed a bottle of brandy, for medicinal purposes only you understand. We anticipated bracing weather.
I admit that two days before leaving there was a momentary pause of coming doom, but it soon passed.
