Day 2: Bowness-on-Solway to Burgh by Sands (7 miles, about 5 hours)

We have eaten far too well so far. Last night in the hotel restaurant overlooking the Tyne bridges and central Newcastle with its jumble of modern and medieval architecture I had green Thai curry with chicken, fresh red chilis, and basmati rice and some sort of mint chocolate mousse-like confection with creme anglaise, washed down with a decent cabernet. This morning the breakfast buffet stretched  the whole length of the room—a full complement of both “English” and “Continental” breakfast choices. So I had fresh grapefruit, stewed apricots, mixed berry compote, crusty fresh bread with Irish butter, ham, cheese, mortadella, smoked salmon, kippers, cucumber slices, cherry tomatoes, and a large pot of coffee! That and a single ice cream bar purchased (on the honor system) from a freezer in the corner of a camping barn along the Path was more than  adequate to last me until dinner at the pub in Burgh by Sands. A whole fillet of absolutely fresh, snow white, melt in your mouth North Sea cod fried in an ethereally crisp batter, with a squeeze of lemon and a side of chips and crunchy coleslaw and a bit of salad, all washed down with a pint of Guinness in a quiet, friendly village pub with good dinner conversation. It doesn't get any better than that!

Burgh House, Burgh by Sands

In the yard next door

White Row, Burgh by Sands--an example of "clay dabbins" constructiuon

Just down an alley (farm track) from the main road

Farm track out from Burgh by Sands

The Solway Firth glints on the distant horizon

After dinner, Pop crashed, but I put back on my boots and headed down a farm track toward the Solway marshes. The map showed a dotted line (for “footpath, no visible path”) leading from the end of the farm track through the marshes to the Solway, and I wasn’t quite sure how one follows an invisible path or what the point of mapping an invisible path is. But just as I was coming to the end of the visible path, I caught up with a young family out walking and asked them how one manages with not visible paths. 

 

“Well, where do you want to go?” “I don’t know—I’ve never been here before—I thought maybe I could walk to the Solway, but it looks rather far away still.” “Well, where did you come from?” “Do you mean just now or where am I from? I’m staying at Rosemount Cottage in the village, but I came from the middle of the US to walk the Wall.” “I’ve lived here all my life but never walked the Wall!” “Yes—that’s the way it goes; I’ve lived in Chicago for years and have never done the sights there either.” “Well, you could walk out into the marsh a bit and then—do you see that [very tiny, distant] monument over there?—that’s King Edward’s Monument where he died of illness in the marshes on the way to fight the Scots and then was carried to St Michaels church in Burgh by Sands and then to Carlisle and then back to London for burial. If you walk to the monument and look back, you can’t miss the path back to the village.” So I squished my way across the "marsh" (more like a wet field than a marsh this far up from the Solway) to the monument, and they decided to head that way too.

They walked much more slowly than I but caught up with me as I was admiring the monument, 

so I got to listen in on the father’s explanations of who King Edward was and how he died and why the monument was here and why the Scots didn’t like the English and why they were fighting and why he was called “Edward Longshanks” and what a shank is and why most people were much shorter in those days. By then the little girl’s legs were tired, so her father swung her up on his shoulders and she marveled at how tall their shadow was in the setting sun. And then “Daddy, you have a white bit in your hair—when did you get that?” “When you came along.” At which point I couldn’t help laughing, and he said, “But unfortunately it’s true!” All quite charming.

King Edward I died here, July 1307

St Michael's Church, Burgh by Sands
Tower built1360 as refuge during Border raids.

I think this is poison hemlock

St Michael's Church, late 12th C (Norman)

On the way back from Solway Marsh to Burgh by Sands

Gate, Burgh by Sands

St Michael's church yard, Burgh by Sands

St Michael's church yard, Burgh by Sands

Gate, Burgh by Sands

Gate, Burgh by Sands

Rosemount Cottage sitting room

Back at the B&B, I settled into the sitting room sofa to write up the day. Soon there was a banging and mumbling and sound of orchestral music in the hallway, and a portly late-middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit, with bouttoniere, tattersall shirt, and houndstooth  tie stumbled into the sitting room, music blaring from his pocket. When he saw me he apologized profusely, but he didn’t look very good, so I suggested he sit down a bit. Of course he knew before the end of my first sentence that I was American, and he confessed that Englishmen like their beer and he had had a bit too much. I asked him where he was from and he said people always asked him that because his accent is a blend (of socially undesirable accents).  I said that I couldn’t  tell one English accent from another—just that some are harder for me to understand than others. So we ended up talking about US and UK regional and class accents, and class and rural vs city social attitudes, and how well (or not well) US and UK cities are integrated ethnically, and social welfare safety nets, and his wife’s death, and his son’s wedding (at which he had just consumed the excess of beer), and the tensions among his sons, and the death of his daughter years ago of pulmonary hypertension. He did eventually think to turn off his music, which had morphed through several genres over the course of our musings, and even later decided he was up to tackling the stairs and making himself a pot of tea and going to bed. He looked much better at the breakfast table several hours later.

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I seem to have skipped from breakfast to dinner, but the bit in between—our first day of walking the Wall Path—was just as magical as I hoped it would be! The travel agent's driver Steve met us at the hotel and drove us from Newcastle to Bowness-on-Solway, not quite all the way to the open Irish Sea, but close enough. Steve grew up in Newcastle and gave us a bit more information on the industrial and agricultural history of the area--we had already gathered that Newcastle had been an industrial and coal mining city, hit hard by the changing economy, and has been repositioning itself as a center for art and music and architectural tourism. We drove past one of the last large industrial employers--a Challenger tank factory, but Steve said it was about to close too. The countryside just west of Newcastle is deeply rolling--mostly fields of cattle and sheep, but some fields of rape (which the Rapeseed Association of Canada thought best to rename as "canola" (per Wikipedia)) and a few scattered woodlots (Steve said there were a few mills making chipboard and pallets from local lumber, but that good clear pine comes from Switzerland and Scandinavia).


View Larger Map

 

At Bowness-on-Solway, the tide was out and the mud flats beckoned. So I went to see if there were tide pools full of interesting  creatures—and, not minding my feet, promptly inaugurated my boots to the ankle in squishy mud. No tide pools with interesting creatures, but I did get to chat with a grandmother enjoying the glorious cool but sunny weather with her granddaughter and husband.  She remembered the Solway mud flats of her youth as teeming with shellfish and shorebirds such that you had to watch your feet to avoid stepping in nests.  She pointed out the sole remaining pier of a railway bridge that used to cross the Solway to Scotland on the other shore and remembered the English and Scottish fishermen stringing nets out from each side and meeting in the middle to catch the running salmon. The Solway turf she said was considered the best in England--used at Wimbledon and Ascot in the old days.

Grandparents and child enjoy the Solway margins

The gorse was abuzz with pollinators

Gorse, Bowness-on-Solway

Bowness-on-Solway

Community Center hallway, Bowness-on-Solway

Near the Path's beginning

 

Blowing bubbles at the bottom of the garden, overlooking the Solway

Cornflower (I think)

After an initial bit of woodland, we came upon a curious, decaying structure set in the Solway mud, evidently an abandoned harbor wall. A local man, out for a stroll, told us it was the remnant of Port Carlisle, built in 1819 to facilitate shipping in and out of Carlisle, some 12 miles further inland, up the River Eden. A canal was built in 1823 to allow barges to be hauled from the port into Carlisle, but it was closed in 1854 and replaced with a railroad.

Canal walls, Port Carlisle

Port Carlisle Basin--now filled in

Eventually, the Path opened out onto tidal plain--flat and subject to flooding. Every few hundred feet along the road were signs listing the maximum depth of the water on the road at high tide. From the long grasses and grazing cattle, it was clear that the tide doesn't rise that high frequently, but the life ring and sign suggest the tides can be treacherous.

After the tidal plain, more scatterings of houses interspersed with pastures and the odd farm field. Sometimes the Path was on asphalt road, sometimes graveled path, sometimes cut through woods, sometimes a mown strip across pasture with unconcerned sheep or wary cows, occasionally even across stretches of cow-churned mud--hard on the ankles when dry but, I suspect, impassable when wet. I kept seeing dense patches of something that looked like mint or anise hyssop. Finally, curious, I knelt down to inspect--yes--stems square in cross-section, leaves hairy, but no--the sap just tasted green, not minty or lemony or anisey. Then a leaf just lightly brushed the back of my hand--instant burning and puffy redness. Oh--nettles! I should have thought to look up how to identify nettles. (Later web search confirmed that nettles and mints are often confused).

We arrived in Burgh by Sands late mid-afternoon, tired and hungry, but the pub wasn't serving dinner quite yet. Pop was eager to be done and wanted to locate the B&B right away, but we did read the historical/architectural blurbs in the park next to the pub, which described "clay dabbins," a form of clay housing construction apparently unique to Cumbria. The two buildings in Burgh by Sands still roofed with thatch (pictures below) are of clay dabbins construction, as is White Row, the multi-family row house pictured earlier.















[Most roofs along the Path were slate or modern slate-imitations, but clay tile was also common. I did see some thatch and one plywood roof in Burgh by Sands, but I didn't notice any American-style asphalt shingles anywhere along the Path].

Just a bit further up the road, we found the B&B with these warning signs posted on the gate (we never saw or heard the Labrador, and the fearsome guinea pigs cowered in the back corner of their cage despite my best efforts to coax them out):