Full of Beans in Bellingham

Day 15

Posing with illegal immigrants near Hadrian's Wall

After quite a good breakfast I left at 9.30. I don’t know why I left it so late, I’d been up since seven. There were only two possible options for the day: the seven miles along Hadrian’s Wall or continue to Bellingham, another fifteen miles further on. There is nowhere to stay easy to get to in between. My ideal was Bellingham but a room in a small town on a Friday night might be difficult and it was a long way. My heels were still hurting and the National Trails pamphlet advises that the Hadrian’s wall section is quite tough going. There isn’t a lot of accommodation on the Wall either so I thought if I stayed in the area I might have to end up in Haltwistle or even have to use the train to get somewhere. A line runs parallel to the Wall from Carlisle to Newcastle. After much deliberation I decided on my usual tactic of leaving the decision for later and seeing how things went.

Hadrian’s Wall is one of the man made wonders of Britain. A truly awe-inspiring sight marching up and down the line of the escarpment for mile after bloody mile. When you’re trying to walk 22 miles with a rucksack on your back it becomes more of an assault course than a sight to wonder at. Though I did get to wondering, I wondered what the Romans could possibly have done for me: built the bloody thing on the flat bit for a start.

The pamphlet is right, it is hard going. There are just so many hills, all of them small but all of them steep and very tiring. The sheer numbers of people about were rather astonishing as well. It made Malham and High Force seem like havens of peace and isolation. As soon as I hit the wall there was a scattered group about twenty strong as well as a few twos and threes in sight. Then, coming across the visitors centre there were coach parties, school parties family groups and individuals acting as unpaid guides to foreign friends, trying to remember what they’d learned about Roman Britain in primary school thirty years before. There were quite a few Romans and Celts knocking about as well for the edification of the children. It wasn’t quite all the fun of the fair but there might well have been chariot racing and gladiatorial contest in the afternoon rounded off with an orgy after nine in the evening

I saw the reverend and his wife there as well. They were only going as far as either Once or Twice Brewed, I can’t remember now which it was, so were taking it easy. They passed me half way up the next hill.

Of course near the car parks it was exceptional busy but there were also an incredible number obviously walking a fair few miles, if not the whole way; though I didn’t see one other person carrying a full sized rucksack. If you’ve read any of the other instalments of this walk you’ll know the weather was hot. The various farms along the Wall could have added a decent supplement to their livelihoods by selling drinks and snacks but none of them bothered.

When I finally got view of the two lakes which the Pennine Way runs between when heading north from the Wall I decided to definitely try for Bellingham. I was heartily sick of the Hadrian’s Wall area by that time and didn’t want to stay there a moment longer, even if I could have got a room nearby. I started on my list. The first few I rang were full but a women with a friendly voice at Crofters End said she had a room and when I told her I might be late she said she’d do me beans on toast if I arrived too late to get a meal in a pub. That sounded a pretty good offer so I was all set, as long as I could stagger my way there before she retired for the night.

Shortly before saying goodbye to the Wall, at 2.15, I past Vic and his missus, who were resting simply to fill up their day. They were rather bemused that I still had such a long way to travel in the middle of the afternoon. They’d probably have been nearly there by now.

I still had miles to go before I slept and I’d virtually no water left but I felt a huge feeling of relief as I wandered away from the crowds and climbs of probably the longest seven miles of the walk.

Looking at the huge conifer plantation on the map and in front of me I knew I’d need to find water before I started through the dead zone. A few hundred yards before the front rank of trees I came across a muddy stream. There were quite a few hoof prints next to it but none of the other usual signs that cattle leave of their passing, at least not in the part where I took my water from, so that would have been alright then.

There is something sinister and alien about the uniform ranks of fir trees pressing in on either side as you walk through along the track. The lack of individuality is mind numbing and the suffocating cushion of dead pine needles spread beneath them selfishly excludes the possibility of any other life.

About half a mile into the trees I met, coming the other way, the only other walker I was to see for the rest of the day. From very few words I gleaned that he wasn’t just walking the Pennine Way but continuing all the way to his home in Somerset having started from John o’ Groats. I would have thought rather than do John o’ Groats to Somerset he might as well have gone the whole way, if only to stop people asking him in future why he didn’t. He’d been on his own for so long I think he was forgetting how to talk. He reminded me of Ben Gunn in Treasure Island but sadly I’d no cheese to give him. Even being only nearly an end to ender he has my respect, though I’m also a bit wary of such people. I suspect that they can’t only be a little bit whacky to attempt such an undertaking and if they weren’t when they started out they would be by the time they’d finished.

I took the photo which is Haughton Common, a breath of air between two stifling coverings of trees, because I’d been at this point ten years before. My wife and I had left the children with my mother over an Easter bank holiday and stayed at the pub in Wark for a couple of nights. I’d gone for a Sunday stroll from Stonehaugh and found myself at this point. I hadn’t done much walking then, I’d have been on my first or second pair of boots but I very much remember standing at this spot wondering what it would be like to have walked all the way from Edale. I took the photo of the sign as it depicts more accurately than I can express in words how I was feeling after walking all the way from Edale.

I had to fill up with water again at the stream near Shitlington (I put two tablets into the water) before climbing up Shitlington Crags. Shitlington is a very small place but has a lot to put up with because of its name. I’m glad to say that now I’m past the half way point in my life I have matured enough to no longer feel the need to make schoolboy jokes about a name like Shitlington. I know very little about Shitlington anyway, though I believe it is twinned with Lower Peover in Cheshire but they haven’t put it on the signs yet.

From the top of the crags it’s a gentle walk down the fields to the road then quite a noisy one to Bellingham. The locals seem to have set themselves a speed limit of 70 along this stretch of road. Going less than seventy miles per hour is perhaps regarded as sissy. I arrived at Crofters End, which is a little way before you reach Bellingham proper, at eight fifteen or thereabouts.

The accommodation at Crofters End is not en-suite and I’ve seen more up to date rooms in museums as an exhibit of how we used to live but it was a real pleasure to stay there. Their speciality was the lady of the house: Jan. She is a lovely person and the perfect landlady having an easy going natural friendliness that immediately makes you feel at home.

I suppose I could have just about made it to a pub in time for a meal but it wouldn’t have been pleasant sat eating alone among the Friday night drinkers. I was quite relieved when the offer of beans on toast was repeated and extremely happy to find it waiting for me after my shower. It was a very generous helping with added tomatoes, cakes and biscuits to follow plus a pot of tea. It was a real life saver.

The husband, Tom came in and the three of us nattered about this and that. He was a very nice chap but a bit quiet. He’d been a farmer for thirty odd years but I bet he never shouted “Get Off My Land” at anyone, at least not without adding “Please”. Now he was semi-retired, keeping himself busy by carting the baggage of hikers between Greenhead and Byrness.

They told me that I’d nearly been the only guest that night but earlier in the evening they’d been sent a couple from a nearby country house hotel. They were a rather odd pair and after I’d met them it made me wonder if the hotel had really been full. To protect their anonymity and because I can’t remember her name I’ll call them Tony and Cleo. He was a Scottish bachelor in his late fifties, she an English grandmother a few years his junior. He looked as though he might well have been a Scottish virgin until his encounter with the granny who was slim and blond (perhaps) and probably hadn’t been round the block just the once. She had the airs and graces of stuck- on refinement that you only see in working class women.

Tom and Jan had been quite tickled by an incident when they’d arrived. Tony had wanted to park his car at the back of the house and this involved going through two gates. The woman apparently remained serenely in the passenger seat like Lady Muck while her intended stopped at the first gate, got out of the car and opened the gate. After driving through he stopped, got out of the car to close the first gate and open the second. After driving through the second gate he got out of the car, closed the second then opened the car door for her ladyship to alight. While we were still giggling they arrived back from their meal and exactly the same thing happened. We watched them with sideways glances through the window and a great deal of only partly suppressed amusement. Proof if were needed that chivalry is not dead and neither is being a lazy cow.

They came to join us in the living room or, I should say, she did because he had to pop out again.

‘Oh, I left my make-up bag in the car. Go and get it for me would you Tony.’ She had a smile like an over-ripe lemon.

When her be-plighted trother had scampered off she began to tell us about how lucky she was to have had a lovely meal for a change.

‘I have to be so careful with what I eat you know. Some things, like onions just go straight through me. I often hardly have anything at all when I eat out.’

We sat there grateful for having been told.

Jan deftly kept the conversation going about their plans for the wedding which was going to be in Bellingham. Neither had any connection with the place but it was where, somehow, they’d met. It was also somewhere that no-one knew them.

Tony came back in after quarter of an hour.

‘Are you sure you left it in the car?’

‘Yes dear, quite sure.’

‘You didn’t leave it in the room.’

‘No I’m positive.’

Tony left the room and five minutes later came back with a triumphant smile as well as the bag.

‘It was in the room all the time my darling.’ He admonished.

‘Hee hee hee silly me.’ She giggled.

Tony sat down, arms spread on the arms of the chair in a manner which indicated he thought he’d won.

We sat there for a while trying to have a conversation but really listening to how every topic that was brought up effected Cleo. It was quite astounding how self centred she was. Jan bravely tried to get the subject matter on to someone else in the room time and time again without success. Tony was a keen fisherman, for example. She thought it cruel and anyway the bones always got stuck in her throat. The rest of the fish went straight through presumably. I’d walked over twenty miles that day she was told but you wouldn’t find her walking over the fields in muddy boots, she’d look silly. I tried to get a separate conversation going with Tom but she soon managed to put a stop to that.

It was amusing to begin with but soon became very boring and when she started telling us about her digestive problems again I made my excuses.




The first thing anyone from Bellingham will tell you is how to pronounce the name of their town. You musn't forget the hidden e after the g so the ing is not how you'd pronounce it in sing but like the inge in hinge. The E.U. are considering when to make this illegal.