This was such a long day. The
walking was varied. The first three and the last four miles were awful. The
twelve in between were OK, sometimes lovely.
We left Murton. The only way
to leave Murton is along roads. Busy straight roads with roundabouts. Neither
Poppy nor the dog were impressed. To be honest I wasn’t either.
After some fields and country
lanes we saw the first sign that we were nearing the coast.
We passed an amazing quarry.
I was transported back to my childhood which had a percussive soundtrack of
blasting from the quarries all around - though the quarries in Hartshill back
then were much deeper.
And finally the sea.
The walk took us along the
clifftops, much to the dog’s frustration. She could smell the sea, see it, hear
it, but she couldn’t get in it. Every time there was a path to the beach she
tried to lead the way down. But we had miles to do and on we marched.
Every now and then the path
went down to sea level, then back up to the clifftop again. Down and up, down
and up. We were soon exhausted.
There were yellow flowers
everywhere. Coltsfoot, celandines, primroses, cowslips, gorse.
There were viaducts.
After fifteen miles we’d had
enough. We’d run out of water, we were hungry, we just wanted to stop walking
and lie down.
And then there was
Hartlepool.
It began with the caravan
park that was not so much a park but a caravan town with straight roads that
went on forever.
This was followed by a golf
course where we were warned by a party of friendly male golfers to look out, as
‘the lads were coming down’.
Then a path which ran between
the railway and some abandoned industrial sites, which was possibly the worst
place I have ever been. There were
broken fences falling in on the path, broken glass underfoot, dust over
everything, graffiti and every type of litter imaginable, plus some
unimaginable. People were there with their kids and their quad bikes having a
good time. But we wanted to get out as quickly as possible.
The way out was through a
dark, litter-strewn, urine-scented tunnel under the railway which brought us
out at the end of Winterbottom Road.
Now we’d walked seventeen
miles and Winterbottom Road didn’t look inviting. A large woman with blue hair
was in her front garden and we enquired about buses into town.
She shook her head. ‘Bank
Holiday, Sunday, they come when they come’. Her neighbours were also in their
front garden, sitting on chairs next to their front doors in the evening
sunshine. ‘Girls,’ called our new friend, ‘buses?’ They shook their heads.
She gave Bet some water and
gave us the number of a taxi firm, but there were no taxis for at least an
hour.
We set off, and we walked two
miles through the back end of Hartlepool. Our legs ached, our backs ached, our
feet ached, our fingers were swollen, and our clothes and bags had rubbed our
skin raw in numerous places. We were hungry and we had no water. We squabbled. It
wasn’t fun.
The people of Hartlepool
thought we were strange. They stared at us. They stared at our backpacks. They
stared at our dog. They drove past us in cars, staring. They stood in groups on
street corners and watched us pass. An old man drove past on a motorbike
wearing a flat cap and slippers. A car turned out of a side road in front of us
and drove along the pavement. A man lurched towards us trailing his hand
against the wall. Despite our tired legs we walked faster.
Eventually we arrived at the
Brafferton Guest House at 8pm and collapsed. It seemed like three days since
we’d set off from Murton. I was too tired to write, so we just ate takeaway
curry and fell asleep, dreaming of row after row of holiday caravans, boarded
up shops and broken glass crunching underfoot.
19.5 miles
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