The Hounds of the Byrness Hotel

Day 16

I’d gone to bed early and after a good night’s sleep woke up early, at six. I’d an urgent job to do which was difficult without having a table in my room. I went downstairs to use the one in the living room where I sat and scrawled a few illegible lines on the postcards I’d bought in Hawes, getting them ready to be sent off before my trip was actually over. After savouring for a while the satisfaction of a task completed I’d nothing else to do so I went back to my room to retry the Telegraph puzzles.

I must admit to having problems, about this time, with the various puzzles I buy the paper for. I quite enjoy the cryptic crossword, though I don’t like to be greedy and hardly ever finish a full one, but I’d been doing less and less of it over the two weeks I’d been walking. I was even having a few problems with the sodoffus, or whatever they’re called. There was no doubt my brain was atrophying more each day, definitely a case of losing it ‘cos I wasn’t using it. The conversations I was having with myself, which I thought had been going quite well, were obviously not stimulating enough.

Breakfast had been arranged for the three of us at eight o’clock but I went back downstairs at 7.30 after hearing Jan moving about. She’d guessed that I wouldn’t want to eat with the other two and had already started cooking my sausages. Tony and Cleo didn’t in fact come down until well after eight and I was out of their way packing to leave by then.

Once you reach Bellingham the only option for the next day is the fourteen miles to Byrness, unless of course you’ve got a tent or fancy sleeping rough on the Cheviots. There is a café/shop attached to the petrol station there but every report I’d read about it stressed how tiny it was and how little it has to offer. All the books advise that if you need to do any shopping do it in Bellingham, so that’s what I did. Thinking that I might take two days over the last 26 mile day I needed enough to last me 3 days.

The so call ‘well stocked’ small supermarket didn’t really have anything I wanted. I was out of emergency ration shortbread fingers which I find just the thing for a quick energy ingestion when flagging halfway up a hill. The shop didn’t have any so I had to make do with digestive biscuits, which are a poor substitute. I find muffins quite good for a more sustained power boost while on the hoof. These are the blueberry or cherry ones which are often sold in newsagents and village shops. Again I was out of luck and had to settle for a Cadbury chocolate muffin which seemed to have as much packaging as cake. There was a sandwich shop nearby for a ham roll and also a newsagent for chocolates as well as the right scale of map for the Cheviots. I didn’t buy a paper with it being a Saturday and I didn’t have a wheelbarrow with me.

So, heavily weighted down with junk food I started sweating up another hill at the start of the day, well at ten thirty anyway. It was yet another hot one but cloudy again and this time with several threats of rain. All the way up the hill I was thinking what I was going to do the next day and at the top, just past the farmyard I lost my nerve and rang Uswayford, the only place to stay within walking distance of the Way. I didn’t ring to book it, I just wanted the reassurance that they had availability so I’d have the option. As it turned out they were going on holiday so I didn’t have that option. I knew there was a b & b in Kirk Yetholm that would pick you up but it involved a two and half mile detour down from the hills and I didn’t want to do that. It was also the idea of getting to Kirk Yetholm by car then coming back to complete the walk which didn’t somehow appeal. I adopting the optimism of Mr McCawber, sure that something would turn up as I continued on my way.

I normally like the wide open spaces of moorland but thought the area around Lough and Lord’s Shaw rather too featureless to be enjoyable. I think the local wildlife were of the same opinion. There were virtually no birds to be seen or heard. The only noise was the occasional flat whoomp of an artillery piece being fired on the distant ranges.

About a quarter of a mile before the road, which crosses the path before it heads up Padon Hill, I saw another walker. He was following the road towards the forest to the left. Noting from the map that the path rejoins the road further on I was tempted to go the same way but feeling perfectly fit and not needing to catch up any time I stuck to the official Pennine Way and carried on up the hill. It wasn’t too long before I was wishing I hadn’t.

From Padon Hill the path goes down into a small valley then, squashed between the firs of a plantation and a broken wall it runs up the other side onto Brownrigg Head. This was, without doubt, the nastiest little stretch of the whole walk. Even though it hadn’t rained in weeks it was a stinking swamp. I tried to walk on the wall as much as possible but the branches kept getting in the way. The torrents of sweat pouring from me added to the quagmire with every ooze squelching step and I was continually nipped at by a plague of midges while another plague, of greenfly, attached themselves to my hair, face, hands and clothing. Every time I gulped some air I got a mouthful of them.

According to Wainwright, whose book I of course read after I’d done the walk, the original Pemnnine Way was along the road and was only switched to go by way of the swamp thanks to the Rambler Assoc. ( Northern S & M Division).

Where the path used to enter the forest it didn’t anymore. All the trees to the right of the track had been cut down. This had improved the vista dramatically and allowed wildlife to return. There were several varieties of flowers which I didn’t know the name of and lots of birds, particularly finches to make the walk along the stony track much more pleasant than it otherwise would have been.

Beware of deer setting light to their farts

Just before Byrness are two settlements which overcompensate for their lack of size by having ridiculously long names. The first is Blakehopeburnhaugh which, as far as I could see is a farm, a shack, a car park and a toilet, and Cottonshopeburnfoot which is mainly a caravan and camp site. The Way here meanders next to the river Rede, the sort of place you could go for a stroll in your posh shoes before or after a substantial Sunday roast. It was here that I had my only fall of the walk somehow slipping and finding myself with a very close-up view of the grass. I thought to myself that it was just as well I hadn’t been so clumsy over the previous 240 miles, I’d have been a hell of a mess by now.

During the time I’d been upright on my journey from Bellingham I’d been pondering what to do with tomorrow. I’d finally come up with idea that, as long as the weather was fine, I’d have a leisurely start in the morning and trundle over the Cheviots at my own pace. I could walk late into the evening and spend the few hours of darkness in the second refuge hut, wandering down to KirkYetholm in the morning.

By way of explanation: the route between Byrness and Kirk Yetholm is 25 or 26 miles long, depending on whose book you read, with a 3 mile optional side trip up and down The Cheviot itself. Everyone emphasises how difficult it is which tends to put the fear of God into gullible readers like myself. Along the way are two refuge huts, one 9 miles from Byrness the other about 5 miles from the end.

I reached the small shop at the filling station shortly before it closed. It turned out to be a proper café and shop, well stocked with everything I could have wanted but I didn’t want to add to the junk I had in my bag. Tom had told me the hotel no longer had a bar so I bought a couple of fizzy drinks. I thought about buying a sandwich for tomorrow but as I was planning a late start I left it to buy one fresh in the morning.

The road to Blakehopeburnhaugh. Tomorrow's walk begins up the hill in the middle then off along the ridge to the right

The owner of the hotel, who showed me to my room, didn’t seem unfriendly but was very quiet. I think he was a dour Scot, but didn’t say enough for me to determine an accent. None of the rooms there are en suite and you expect to be told where the bathroom is, I had to ask. The room rate only included half a toilet roll apparently but luckily I was the only guest and it did include dinner. On the way downstairs at the allotted time I was thinking he might have volunteered the information as to which room the dining room was, or perhaps put a sign on the door, then I wouldn’t have let the dogs out. I heard some noise behind one door so opened it and was immediately knocked to the side by a herd of large barking animals immediately afterwards being obliged to dodge a gang of children who ran after them. I could hear the barks and shouts, up and down the stairs and round and about the hotel for quite some time afterwards from the safety of the room behind the next door I tried, which turned out to be the right one.

It was more like a family dining room having only one table. There were two others already there waiting for dinner and at first I thought they must be fellow guests but no, I didn’t have to share my half toilet roll with them, they were camping at Cottonshopeburnfoot and had just come for dinner. They were a father and son team also doing the Way. The father, John was in his mid fifties the son, Gary, in his twenties and were both very good company. After half an hour talking to them it struck me who they were. These were the two the Londoners had told me about: the pair that had walked twenty five miles then cleaned the café in Keld out of everything edible at nine in the evening.

John was a great organiser and had sorted out the division of responsibilities in a very equitable fashion. Gary, being much younger and fitter was carrying their one rucksack with all their clothes and camping gear. John, being the more experienced walker, had the more important job of carrying the heavy maps and doing the navigating. In spite of John’s expertise they’d still managed to get lost a few times. How they laughed about it, well John did anyway. The first time they’d gone astray was at the same spot as me on Bleaklow, although they’d gone a lot further and lost a lot of height before realising their mistake, then trudging a long way back up hill. John was quite amused when I told him that they could have just carried on to the cycle track at the bottom and walked back along that and that some people purposely go that way to avoid the heights of Torside Clough. Gary was amused too.

After the meal, which was good homemade grub we said our goodbyes with a

‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Break a leg.’

They went back to their tent and I to my room. It was an quite a pleasant room though the view was only the yard at the back and the telly reminded me of my hippy commune days. I wanted to catch the weather forecast so I could be a bit more prepared for tomorrow than not being prepared at all. My paper was two days old so I didn’t know the tv schedule and of course it’s different on a weekend. I rang my wife to ask her to keep an eye out for the weather and told her which part of the map to look at. She could get more stations than me. There seemed to be a football match on every one of the three working buttons I pressed, though, come to think about it, they might all have been tuned to the same channel, the amount I know about the game.

Soon after my call I received a text saying it was going to be fine till Thursday. Great I thought until not long after the BBC news and weather came on the telly. It was the bloke who reminds me of Ken Dodd. He looked out of the screen at me in that manic bulge eyed way that dares you to keep a straight face.

‘It will be cloudy but dry in the morning over Scotland and northern England’, he said, ‘but LOOK AT THAT! That big lump of cloud in the Atlantic will sweep down over the borders bringing with it lumps and lumps of wind and rain from early afternoon onwards… Missis!’ He waved his hands around in such a way that if he’d had flags or tickling sticks attached to them he could have also given his message in semaphore.

That scuppered my plan for a leisurely start and a stroll in the sunshine. I’d start early and get some miles under my feet before the rain.

The forecast for the Manchester area, by the way, was fine till Thursday.

The Byrness Hotel with tomorrow's hill behind, looking much steeper from this angle