England – The Hiking Adventure Begins
May 30-31
Monday was a bank holiday, and we took it easy. We worked and walked along the waterfront loop in the morning. After lunch, we pub hopped for a bit. I was in search of an afternoon tea but, instead of tea, we had a plate of sweets with a bottle of wine. Mike took more photographs of the waterfront that evening because the weather cleared.
Mike had to work Tuesday morning. I did some last minute shopping for our camping trip – protein bars, long-sleeve shirt for Mike and another bag. It’s too bad I forgot to get a towel. Mike finished work just before lunch. We had a casual lunch and went to the train station.
It was an uneventful train ride to Carlisle. Because we got an early start, we had time to kill in Carlisle. We walked around and wondered how much our sore feet would affect our upcoming hiking adventure. We were also a little tired. We had an early dinner, missed the bus by 10 minutes and didn’t want to wait nearly two hours for the next bus, and took a cab to our campsite. The cab driver asked what we thought of Trump. (He supported Hilary and thought Bill Clinton was a very good US President.) We asked whether he thought England would vote to leave the European Union in June. He didn’t think that would happen because there would be too much lost business.
We were the first to arrive at the campsite. With more time on our hands, we visited the local pub and had a second dinner. Now, we are hanging out in our campsite. The Oztent is cool, and they have it all set up for us. All we have to do is walk to the next tent waiting for us, where our same sleeping blankets will be and our night gear. This is a pretty neat set up. We are both starting to get more excited about this part of our England adventure.
Later: we just attended an orientation meeting and learned that we didn’t receive a map that we needed. In fact, we thought it was weird that we didn’t get any map before the trip. But, we are only a one hour walk out of Carlisle and have to walk through the town anyway, so we’ll pop into an outdoor store and buy a map. Problem solved.
