- Start: Greenhead
- Finish: Once Brewed
- Distance: 14.13 Km
- Time: 06:50:11
This was the shortest day yet, but took an inordinate amount of time! A fact potentially explained by the elevation profile 🏔️
We started the day with a bit of fun, playing hide and seek in Thirlwall Castle, not hugely successfully with enormous bags on🙂
Thirlwall Castle was beloved of 19th Century Romantics, both poets and painters. This version by Henry George Hine (1811 – 1895),
is vaguely similar to the current ruin 😀
After that brief dalliance, the real climbing began.
The first climb up to Walltown Quarry took us past the current excavation of the Magna Roman Fort.
Built before Hadrian’s time, it was part of the defense of the Stanegate, the border system in place for several generations before a wall was conceived of.
The quarry itself has long since been abandoned and is now tranquil with a lovely lake at its heart.
Soon after this we reached the wall again, stretching away along the side of the crags.
After some tough climbing,
we finally reached the top of Mucklebank Crag from whence we could see our own Mount Doom, Orodruin or Amon Amarth,
aka Winshield Crag, the highest point on the whole walk and near enough half way!
Like Frodo and Sam we struggled on, through scenic woodland,
ancient forts
(though admittedly not filled with Orcs, though there was a goblin den, ‘Bogle hole’ at one point),
and past monstrous creatures,
(probably not a Balrog, more like a sheep/cow cross?!)
with the forbidding aspect of the crag forever in our view.
Finally, we climbed unnumbered vicious staircases of hell,
until we reached the peak of Winshield Crag, 345m above sea level
and with glorious views of the surrounding country-side
(pub we are staying in tonight!)
and nobody got thrown to a fiery death, not even Gollum😀
What we did get was a stunning view of tomorrow’s climbs,
replicated in this great railway poster in the Twice-Brewed pub we are staying at.
All in all we had a fantastic, if tough, day and are looking forward to the same again tomorrow.