Day 8 - Dalbeattie - Kirkcudbright

Last night the panic made way for a eureka moment and a really fun evening. After waiting at the bus stop for half an hour we saw another break in the rain. I'd gotten into the habit of using a google search on my phone to help us find a campsite, but since that was dead I reverted back to my old road atlas. I could see only one near us and it would mean us leaving our planned route to Castle Douglas and heading south five miles or so. It felt like a bit of a leap but we needed a proper campsite to dry out. The usual happened, I'd underestimated the distance and overestimated my energy levels. As we headed south the land opened up into a large flat bottomed valley to my right with large forested hills on my other side. I could tell that this was one of those glacial valleys that I had learned about in school. Coming into Dalbeattie I was worried, it looked small and purely residential, new housing. In the distance I could see a church spire which indicated a more built up area and I headed for it. Soon came signs for the 'town centre' and then the brown campsite signs I'd been hoping for. The route to the campsite seemd to take me on a tour of this tiny town. The houses were unusual, rows of terraces clad in grey granite. I'd noticed a stone quarry on the way down the valley and made the connection. I rolled in past a couple of pubs, parks, a small river rushing due to the rains. I loved this place.

 

I eventually pulled up at the site totally spent and I walked like a stiff zombie. Eleven pounds! That was the best yet, a new record. Too late now I thought and I rarely even bother to pass a sly commet at these moments, just cough up. Maybe I'd complain about it later, online, anonymously. That was the new way of our generation and actually, as cowardly as it is in nature, it's a more effective sort of justice. Eleven pounds was certainly too much for a piece of grass for the night. Everything else was extra. Anyway, we pitched and headed to a pub. Deuchars IPA on cask again and I ended up on first name basis with about 8 ofthe locals at The Pheasant Hotel including the propreitors. The best chat was had with Jock, an ex forrester who seemed ready to die but had a wit that was undeniable. He had some great stories and I had a couple that he didn't seem to mind sitting through. When two of the locals would talk I really wrestled to catch every word but generally just got the jist of what was said and nodded a lot. I was the only person under forty five in their other than Denise the bartender and an angry looking lesbian playing pool. We acknowledged each other with a smile and I thought that this was probably a hard town for her to live in.

This morning, rain again. A had a stroll around town and then returned to the site and packed up. I really liked this place for some reason, loads of character. It's getting late so I made lunch. Hudson has an uncanny ability to unwrap and thoroughly crush all food items. I make myself a fiery salad with lots of mustard and black pepper so i can throw away the pots they came in. I entertain myself with every mouthful by guessing whether it was too much mustard or too much pepper that just burned my mouth. It's still raining, we need to move. waterproofs on.

We left Dalbeattie and followed the sign for Castle Douglas. Instead of taking us back up North we went towards the hills. It was the large range I had seen yesterday at the other side of the valley, leading out to the sea. The heat in these waterproofs is uncomfortable and the constant swoosh of baggy arms and legs is distracting. The climb is a killer and takes about an hour and a half in the rain. As it starts to plateau it is the most beautiful landscape we've seen so far. Seems like every day is better than the previous. Endless hills disappearing into the haze of rainfall. We dismounted for a twenty minute walk in which hudson shat and I didn't pick it up. As the descent begins we pass through a tunnel made of trees and the road is dappled with sunlight. It's cleared up and the waterproofs are put away. the descent is just gorgeous and I'm awash with relief, it just goes on and on. I look back and I'm sure that Hudson is enjoying the speed. The anticipation of where we might arrive next is always there and this town reveals itself pleasingly, welcome to Kirkcudbright. Beautiful stone churches, colourfully painted houses, a castle, a harbour, fish and chips, ice cream and a bunch of smiling faces. I go left and take a zigzagging sweep of the town. To think that there are all these little places tucked away that I could love so much, the world gets better every day. I try to leave town over the River Dee but just don't want to. I turn back and collect some maps from tourist information, grab some fish and chips and back at the campsite I fall asleep early to the sound of bagpipes and rattling snare drums down the hill from me. It's a great view from here and again they've forgotten to collect their cash. I've set an alarm for 6am and may try sneak out again. It's dishonest but so is ten pounds for sleeping on your grass and shitting in a shed.

Day 7 - Annan - Dumfries - Dalbeattie

An early start as planned at 7:00am though not sunny as the forecast had predicted. Light rain and the ground was swampy which made packing up that bit more unpleasant. If we could get away before the warden turned up we could save our nine pounds. I had a shower and got down to packing our gear which was mostly wet. We'd need another good sunny morning to drag all this out again and dry out, fat chance.
From memory, there were two NCN routes from Annan to Ayr. I remember at one point I really just wanted to do the most scenic route but my ideals were beginning to waver now camping and packing in the wet was becoming a thorn in my side. I cursed myself for not investing more in expensive gear but then remembered how the pole on Pauls super lightweight tent had snapped yesterday and was subsequently held together with zip ties and I quickly recounted myself as lucky.
I think I first saw a sign for the 'Scenic route to Ayr' in Gretna and then I definitely saw one leaving Annan today only worded slightly differently as the 'Tourist route to Ayr', just semantics I thought. I'd decided I would take this route but now I'm starting to think that the scenic and the tourist route are two different routes. I think I've been on this route for about fifeen miles now and though it's not ugly, it's not particularly scenic. It just seems to be riddled with tourist obstacles and I'm getting that cynical feeling I get when told to 'exit through the gift shop'. There are some strange dedications here, I've seen a 'Savings banks museum', I bet they stay open by selling ice cream or something. Anyway, time will tell whether it is a scenic route or not. I think it will be more so as I get further around the west coast and at least it's not too hilly here. By 10am it's raining so heavily that we're forced off the road in a place called Cummertrees. I'm sat in a bus shelter right now writing, it doesn't smell of piss, that's a first.

I've come to believe that if they ever did exist, all the beautiful girls have been exported from Scotland and only the deathly malnourished ones remain. It's not that they're underfed, in fact none of them are. They're all at least slightly overweight and many of them appear to be completely orange on the surface and that accrid smell of powdered make-up mixed with the marshmallow sweetnes of cheap perfume and hairspray hangs in the air long after they've shuffled away. There are a lot of tracksuits and trainers that will never see their owner break a sweat. I was thinking the same back in Newcastle but I was still buzzing with residual optimism at the time and at least people smiled there. The sour faced sows around here wouldn't unscrew their faces for a small child, nevermind some bedraggled looking pikey walking his dog around with a length of old washing line.

We're rained off again and stood on a petrol station forecourt about two miles from Dumfries. I think we'll have done fifteen miles this morning by the time we pass through Dumfries and I'll make sure to do at least double that today. I think that thirty miles a day has to be our absolute minimum and that's accounting for bad roads and bad weather. Anything less is just treading water and really on a good day I'd like to see us do at least fifty miles.
Hudson is coming to an understanding with the trailer. He's finally started lying down in it for long distances and yesterday he jumped back into it on command for the first time, I usually have to lift him.
The objects in our inventory are slowly changing their uses and definitions, expanding their purposes. A tarpaulin is a picnic blanket on wet ground. A towel is also a pillow. A jacket with pockets is as good as a bag when it's strapped to the outside of your panniers.
Hudson always prefers my sleeping bag to his large cushion bed. He is an incessant wriggler, always standing in the wrong place with no sense of purpose and no concept that he might be in the way. Reach over and push him with your hand and he'll just lie down in resignation. 'Surely I can't be in the way now dad?'.
We passed an Aldi supermarket and I couldn't resist the chance to pick up cheap supplies. It turned out to be good timing, as we pulled in the clouds burst into a torrential downpour, the worst we've seen yet. The car park was immediately under an inch of water.
I've taken to sitting down in Hudson's trailer on our road breaks. I think it makes him jealous and want to get back in.
I do like the accent here. It's not rough or abrasive like the stereotypical Glaswegian accent is meant to be but the people do look a little weathered. All slack jawed and sunken eyed with ankles melting over their feet and hair that is either drowned in cheap hair gel or bleached and sprayed to a candy floss finish. I just don't get it, I feel like such a snob, but please, just sit down and have an apple or something.
Today has been a rough weather day. I got about two miles from the supermarket when the rain returned with a vengeance. We sheltered in a stone arched tunnel and I sat down in Hudsons trailer, cooked noodles on my stove and drank a bottle of red IPA I'd just bought. I looked like a really sophisticated homeless person.
We made a break for Castle Douglas on the NCN7, fifteen miles according to the signage. The terrain was beautiful but the climbs were long and hard for us. The weather varied from rain to heavy rain and back again every fifteen minutes. This hard toil up hills in the rain was not what I had dreamt of when touring but the views today were quite spectacular regardless of the weather and the long descents were the most vibrant and dramatic yet. I almostly felt guilty coasting for probably a mile but I had certainly earned it and if I hadn't yet, I would soon. We continued to climb and dip through various tiny villages and the rain stopped for twenty minutes letting us blow dry a little be when we picked up speed. Not long after Castle Douglas had seemed like a twenty minute ride away again the rain came, badly. We had to take shelter and found a glass bus stop in somewhere caled Hardgate, fuck knows. Phone battery dead, camera dead. Need to find a campsite fast.

Day 4 - Haltwhistle - Carlisle

Quite a succesful day today. We awoke in Haltwhistle at 7:45am, packed up and went to the park reception to pay my six pounds. It was empty and though I was tempted to just leave I couldn't do it. I left my money under a stone on the windowsill with a little note saying 'From the man with his dog, we stayed an extra night because of the rain'. It felt like the right thing to do.
As I pushed away to leave down the gravel driveway the owner appeared. She got her money and I didn't look like a thief or a blagger for one second.
I reconnected with the NCN72 in Haltwhistle town and followed it as best I could. It was acting erratically and quickly sent me about three miles in the wrong direction. I probably missed a sign but I never did see it even when I retraced my steps. I was warmed up and felt strong. Hudson was cooperating and we were conquering the rolling roads one crest at a time. When we came into Gilsland the NCN shafted us again and we wasted twenty five minutes but more important was the energy lost.
In this situation you become very aware of your energy and begin to use it up more efficiently. I've become quite adept at riding the gears, knocking the gears up like a trucker when gravity begins to give you a helping hand and easing off of the pedals as I switch down to make the peak of each climb. Each downhill feels like a gift and each climb a challenge. When you feel strong it's an amazing sensation, like lightning in your muscles as your heart beats faster to feed them, it's addictive.
I saw a cyclist in matching blue lycra with a blue helmet on a blue bike with blue valve caps and the kind of bike that has big letters on every component. He said "Morning" as he passed but all I could muster was "Oh, is it still? Good". I felt guilty afterwards, it seems the logical conclusion of the cyclist is to go around looking like an f1 driver. Later in the day I saw he passed me on the way back and I made sure to give a healthy hello this time and he smiled. I realised he'd probably been all the way to Carlisle and passed me on the way back, it's humbling, I'll just have to get used to this slow pace.
We really got rained on today and the pacing was weird and inconsistent. In one minute i saw a sign saying 'Carlisle (A69) - 18 miles' and then the NCN sign said 32 miles. We pitched up just North of Carlisle, the sites a ripoff and full of conspicuous camper vans emblazoned with names like 'Pageant' and 'Sterling', still, they have a laundry here. It's 7pm and I'm already in my sleeping bag with Hudson asleep next to me. I can see myself coming up with more and more creative ways to piss without moving on this trip.

Day 3 - Haltwhistle.

I woke up to heavy rain today so didn't move and went back to sleep. There was no way I was going to pack up my tent in the rain and then ride off into it. The amount of time I have seems endless right now and I'm taking full advantage of this luxury. I finally force myself outside at nearly 2pm and it's still raining. It'll be another night here then.
I look at my map and notice that during my prep I circled Haltwhistle with a pen indicating some sort of point of interest here. It must be something to do with the wall so I headed out on foot in the rain, Hudson in tow, grumpy. I think we'd walked about four miles when we arrived at Cawfields Milecastle. The wall was thick and impressive, the large stones cut quite precisely square and laid five feet deep. A short wall showing the square outline was all that remained of the castle, an apparent gatehouse for monitoring border crossings.I should really learn more about this wall, we often take our history for granted here in England. My uncle, an ancient roman enthusiast and reenacter told me the wall was once twenty feet high. Amazing really, the stubbornness brought on by ego and power. I just feel sorry for the poor blokes that had to build it and now it lies in ruin, funny that. The follies of man.
I'll try for an early start tomorrow, my map says I'm already halfway to Carlisle. The people I've met so far have been nothing but nice and I'm getting by on less than ten pounds a day. Better go get my phone, it's on charge in the toilet block. Night.

3am - The earth just shivered. I only felt it because I'm layed directly on it.

Day 2 - Hexham - Haltwhistle.

Our camp was drenched in dew and we were framed by a shadow cast by the tree we'd camped next to. I dragged the tent over into the sun to dry off and went systematically down the list of packing up. All very painless really and I half looked forward to getting this routine down efficiently. It took maybe 25 minutes for us to be ready to roll and we took to the country lanes. I found my legs to be very weak and it pained me to pedal.. I imagined peeling back my skin to expose the muscle in my legs, all watery and thin like a bloodshot eye ball. I could hardly pedal.
We had run out of water so I tried to make up for it with chocolate but the energy never really came. Every corner conceiled another climb and every descent though pleasant bore the bittersweet indication of an inevitable climb. I got off and pushed when I had to which Hudson was fond of. I realised I was fatigued and hadn't eaten or drank properly. After seven or eight miles we stopped at a stream in the base of a steep gorge and Hudson drank a lot. The following climb was steep and demoralising, I wasn't quite prepared for this.
We came across a Roman excavation sight 'Vindolanda' packed with coach loads of tourists. No dogs allowed. We stopped in the car park and I refilled all the water bottles and cooked lunch using the stove given to me by the embittered Canadian soldier I'd met in a bar 3 weeks ago. The road thereafter was Roman and so perfectly straight. It's hard not to transport your mind back in time, imagining the ranks of infantry walking and scouting and the bulding this damn wall I've seen nothing of yet. I was tired and so was Hudson. I think we only covered twenty miles today and as I came into Haltwhistle and saw the brown sign indicating a close campsite. It was only 3pm but we'd been going for 8 hours. Time for a hot shower and a warm dinner.

Day 1 - Chester-le-street - Newcastle - Hexham.

Retracing the ten mile route I'd taken from Chester-le-street back to Newcastle was a bit of a grind. Lots of loud main roads and invisible inclines. The day started with rain and after half an hour in these ridiculous waterproofs the sun returned. The descent through Gateshead down to cross the tyne river is an ugly one characterised by weaving lanes of angry van and bus drivers. Taking some time to stand on the foot bridge that hung low over the river it was calm for a moment. There had been a lot of glass on the ground and under this weight these Shwobbles are threatening a prolapse. I notice that my front wheel has already being bumped out of true, probably by that capsize event of Day 0.
Once across the river I quickly connect with the National Cycle Network number 72 or simply the 'NCN 72'. Now, I don't know when this network was setup, only that I've only just become aware of it and let me tell you that in a bustling town like this it is a godsend. Taking you down quiet streets, unused back alleys and old industrial estates, it feels like having a cheeky cabbie sat on your shoulder bragging about this route he knows. In this part of the city it's hard to count to thirty without seeing the pink boxed '72' and that reassuring arrow. Once out of the town these signs take on a new character, simply allowing you to ride and enjoy the sights without the need to navigate oneself.
The ride out of Newcastle is all cement and dirty water. The Tyne looks as though if you pissed in it you could only improve the water quality and the new housing and big box stores remind me of my time in Canada and how very few things depress me as much as lazy, greedy suburban sprawl. I much prefer the ideal of village life, and neighbourhood living. Everything on foot or on bike. I remember there is a trend in Germany for these kind of towns, 'Neo-urbanism' or something. They even have a car free neighbourhood there if i remember correctly.
At a pedestrian crossing I cross paths with a middle aged lady hiker changing from her walking boots into training shoes.
"Should be comfier from here on"
She was clearly gesturing towards the smooth path leading back into Newcastle. She told me she'd walked 85 miles from Bowness-on-Solway and had done the coast to coast route in two halves over two years. I thought she was insane and wondered why she didn't cycle it. To walk seemed just one step too crazy. Who knows what drives people to do these things? Something much bigger than my petty crisis perhaps or maybe just a distilled version of my same itch.
The green gradually swelled in my peripheral vision as the city disappeared and after a while I had to remind myself where I was. This was not the North East that I had grown up knowing, visiting my family. This looked more like the Pennine crossing from Manchester to Bradford.
We were really starting to shift now, the rig felt solid and I felt strong and inspired. I was smiling to myself about my friends I'd left in Canada. My love I'd left in Canada. Once Hudsons nervousness had died down we were really putting the miles behind us. I would stay below 15mph but that was swift when compared to our 5mph crawl from Whitley Bay to Chester-le-street a couple of days ago. The place names flew by but I'd have to refer to my map to remember any of them. I kept my eye on the sun to gauge how much daylight we had left and started to scan for a nice camp spot by 7pm. There weren't any. Eventually at around 9:30pm I saw an open gate and pulled into a barley field. Recalling what my Uncle had told me about not flattening crops I made a space for us in the long grass and nettles under a small tree at the fields edge. It felt loney and exposed, not the cozy nook I was hoping for. I noticed the farmhouse was overlooking us about a mile away across the field and wondered if the dogs in the yard there were barking at us. I wanted to be invisible but the orange canvas of the trailer didn't help. After five minutes of pondering I quickly pitched, what's the worst that can happen I thought. The gate was left open. And nothing did happen. I slept quite soundly and hit the snooze button on my phones alarm clock three times before pulling away at 7am.

Day 0 - Whitley Bay - Chester-Le-Street.

I pieced the rig together at my sisters place in Whitley Bay, right on the North East coast. I thought I would use this time to visit some family since my fathers side all hailed from there. An Auntie, Uncle and Cousins. My Granddad. They lived slightly out of the way but not much only about twenty miles, three hours tops I thought even allowing for getting lost and the odd mechanical malfunction.
The day was nearly catastrophic. Hudson was immediately uncomfortable and kept leaping out of the trailer, which since he was tied in entirely capsized us at one point. There were several serious mechanical failures, mostly based around the clamp that attaches the trailer to the rear chainstay of the bike frame. I eventually had to dismantle and reassemble the entire clamp after the protruding bolts got snagged and bent some of the spokes in my rear wheel. I swapped them all so they pointed outward rather than into my wheel, who built this thing anyway? I then rode on for miles not realising that the clamp had slipped backwards on the frame and was rubbing against the hub of the back wheel, acting as a brake. Nearly seven hours later I arrived in Chester-Le-Street exhausted from frustration and a long day in the sun. I was relieved when my family there convinced me to take the next day off and work out the kinks in the bike.
Maybe it's that I'm on the brink of taking everything for granted. Time to take stock or this life is over and every year I live takes a year of my life already.
I took the time in Chester-le-street to bind my trailer with a couple of ratchet straps and pad the trailer clamp with some squares of foam rubber. I filled up on good Northeastern food and took the twenty quid generously offered up by my Auntie. I realised that this household had been through so much over the years but there is a love and communication in this house that was never in mine growing up.