I vacationed in England, leaving 6/19/04 and returning 7/05/04. We did a popular hiking trail known as the "Coast to Coast" trail. It was a great but challenging trip.
I flew from Indy to Chicago to London. In London I took a train from Heathrow Airport to Paddington station downtown, a taxi to Kings Cross train station and then a train to York where the group met. A short bus ride got us to Robin Hood's Bay on the east coast. We then hiked 14 days to St. Bees on the west coast, a total of 200 miles. From St. Bees I took a train to Carlisle, changed trains, to Stafford, changed trains and arrived in London, Euston station. Then a taxi to Paddington station, train to Heathrow, then flights to Chicago and Indy.
Fans of Harry Potter know that the Hogwarts Express leaves London for Hogwarts from Kings Cross Station, London, Platform 9-3/4. Once I got to Kings Cross and figured out the train schedule I started looking around. Since you don't check your bags at train stations I was lugging my duffle bag around with me.
I found Platforms 1 - 8 just fine since they're the main platforms for the station. But eventually I found a sign pointing to Platforms 9 - 10. I turned down a corridor and ended up facing a brick wall which you went around to get to the platforms. The brick wall had a bricked in window and attached to it was a sign which said "Platform 9-3/4." However I did not try to go through it.
As I do a trip I keep a journal / diary. One page of it is for possible trip titles and topics. Over the course of the trip I noted the topic "Weather" 3 different times.
This was one of the wettest trips I've been on. Of course when you think about England and weather, you think about rain. But everywhere we went people kept saying "It usually doesn't rain this much this time of year." Even our trip leader commented that he put his rain gear on more this trip than any other trip he could think of.
Of the 14 days we hiked there were 2 days with no rain. There were about 3 days with a little rain. The remaining days had at least one significant rain storm. There were a couple times when we were in a gale. The good news was that we were not camping and had a chance to dry out every evening.
We covered a lot of distance on this trip, almost exactly 200 miles in 14 days of hiking, which averages over 14 miles a day. This may have been the highest daily average milage of any trip I've done. The good news is that we were not at altitude and a number of days did not involve a lot of elevation change. But it's still a lot.
We had a really tough stretch the 2nd week. One day we did 20 miles. Due to several issues, at 12:15 p.m. that day we still had 18 miles to go. At 7 p.m. we had 6 miles to go. We did those 6 miles in 2 hours 10 minutes which is really moving for hiking. I was pretty tired at the end of this day.
The next day we did 16 miles. Then the 3rd day we did 19 miles of which the last 6 miles were over a very rocky trail which was really hard on our feet. I was really bushed at the end of that day. We completed 55 miles in 3 days, possibly another personal record. But again the good news was that I was always recovered by the next day and ready for another day of hiking.
At a couple places we stayed we learned a new way of counting. In the U.S. rooms might be numbered ..., 11, 12, 14, 15, ..., skipping 13 for the superstitious. In England they numbered rooms ..., 11, 12, 12A, 14, 15. One day someone said that we had 13 miles to do. I corrected her saying that we had 12A miles to do.
One really neat aspect of this trip was the different places we stayed. We stayed in a number of Bed and Breakfast places (B & B's). We stayed in a 400 year old pub. We stayed in a 4 Star hotel. Every place we stayed was great and everywhere we ate was great.
One day we finished the hike and met as planned at a pub a short distance from the trail end. On most trips the group would stay at the hotel right next to the pub but it was completely booked that evening. Our trip leader had explained to us earlier that he had to book us into a 4 Star hotel.
Since the hotel we would be staying at was 3 miles down the road, we didn't have to hike there. Normally our leader would have called for a van to pick us up and shuttle us all to the hotel. But as we were getting ready to leave the pub he checked his watch and said that the local bus should be going by in 5 minutes. So we all caught the bus to go to the hotel.
Picture this: We've been hiking all day. We've been rained on recently. We're tired; we're dirty. As we arrive at the 4 Star hotel someone in the group makes the comment "Well, here come the Beverly Hillbillies." Someone else in the group makes the comment "I wonder how many people arrive at this hotel on a public bus?"
Sometimes the trail would go along the edges of crop fields and sometimes through pastures. There were fences or stone walls between fields and pastures which we needed to get over or through. Sometimes there would be an ordinary gate. But many times there would be a stile, as in turnstile.
There were a number of different types of stiles. Sometimes it would just be a narrow slit in a stone fence. Sometimes it would be some boards that you could use to step on to go over the fence. Sometimes it would be a swinging gate that required a little coordination to get through. At least unlike cows and sheep we were able to get through them.
I have always met fine people on these trips. Of course there's a certain amount of pre-selection going on. People who are jerks are almost never interested in spending 2 weeks hiking.
But sometimes a group meshes or hits it off in a way that other groups don't. This group meshed as well as any group I've been with. To illustrate, this group laughted as much as any. But ever more important, everyone in this group took things in stride.
Perhaps the experience level of the group had something to do with this. But on a challenging trip like this people could get frustrated: long days on the trail, getting rained on, missing the trail and having to backtrack a couple times and all the other little things that could become annoying. For example, everyone complained about the rain, but always with good humor, taking the rain in stride.
The title comes from a comment our leader made toward the end of the trip. The Coast to Coast trail is well known; it's sort of like the Appalician trail here in the U.S. The most popular book on this trail describes it from west to east. The maps we had were laid out west to east. But we did it east to west. One day someone we encountered asked why we were doing it in that direction. Our leader replied "Because we like the wind in our faces" which makes sense since the prevaling winds blow from the west.
But there are other, real reasons to do it the direction we did. I had several reasons for picking this version of the trip, over the west to east version. But one reason was that it seemed that the scenery got better and better as the trip progressed. We went from the moors to the dales to the Lake district which is the most beautiful part of England. Going the other way, the dales and the moors would have been less interesting and enjoyable if they had followed the Lake district.
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