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.

Thursday 16th June - 9:50pm.

To be on the brink is a strange feeling and it's something I've had a sense of for some time now, like I'm casting a shadow over so many unknowns. It's possibly the weight of expectation coming down with age. I end up down a cul-de-sac surrounded by vague generalisations and cliches whenever I try to dissect it. Success? Implosion? Becoming a man? I think that most of all, I'm on the brink of being a 27-year old man who can't think of a single achievement he's proud of. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm here, camped on the edge of a farmers field in the North east of England. I'm apparently following the path of Hadrians wall. A wall the Romans built presumably to give lost souls a bearing when wandering aimlessly.
Ten days ago I arrived in England, back in my home country after three years away. An old friends wedding doubled as an opportunity to see so many of the familiar faces I had missed. That familiarity I had craved for months. The last year had been long and humbling and to be amongst people that know me helped me remember who I was. Which is mostly who I still am, though there have been some irreversible changes.
I had an hour to wait for my train transfer in Birmingham and wondered into the night with my dog Hudson, doing a circuit around The Bullring. It was Friday evening and the apes were out, chanting moronically in their alcoholic stupor. There were no people on the streets, just these animals. Hudson appreciated the abundance of discarded deep fried food on the pavement. I didn't expect to be shocked by my own country. Or disappointed.
I spent the next ten days piecing together the rig I had promised myself. I found an old steel framed touring bike. An English Raleigh 'Classic' in Burgundy Reynolds 531 tubing and dated it back to 1983, the year I was born. I put some new tyres on it, made by a German company Schwalbe. The geordie mechanic helping me insisted on referring to them as "Them Shwobbles" over and over. I picked up a rear rack and panniers, a tent, sleeping bag and handlebar bag. Finally I found a used trailer for sale and picked it up in Shrewsbury. The kind of cycle trailer designed for your small kids to ride in, made of aluminium and bright blue and orange nylon fabric. The lady I bought it from said to her young daughter,
"This man's going to put his children in it now"
Oh no, thank god I thought before I smiled and left. I couldn't be bothered explaining it was for my dog.