The title of this post is something that we've been saying a lot lately when rather bizarre or unexpected things happen. (It's not taken from that youtube video by the way, Liesl just said it and we both picked it up). Also, our official sound for this trip so far is "Merr."
We left for our hike in high spirits, made our trains on time, and arrived in St Bees, which is beautiful.
It was obvious from our first step that this hike was destined to fail. Our backpacks were so, so heavy. Someone even came by and told us that before we started hiking that we had way too much stuff. We decided within the first two minutes that we would have to send some stuff back, we just couldn't carry it all.
We walked just a couple of miles that day, right along the coast. It was gorgeous, but I don't want to talk about it.
We stayed in a camping barn and slept terribly. Liesl's hips hurt, my feet were freezing, we couldn't sleep. We'd hoped to wild camp every night, but we were walking through people's land mostly. There are campsites along the way that you can pay for, but there aren't really enough of them to get to every night unless you have a specific and ambitious plan, which we didn't. We were just going for it. We actually got a ride to the camping barn from a nice guy in town that offered to give us a lift, since it was about 3/4 of mile out of our way. The people in the small farm towns have funny accents. They sound almost Scottish. It's the English equivalent of a southern accent.
We left in the morning. The previous night we'd gone through our things and decided what to send back, but there wasn't a post office til the next stop.
We walked about four miles to the next place. The area was beautiful, but it was not enjoyable because of the weight we were carrying.
We walked through mud and a water-logged grassy area. My shoes filled up with water, and I think Liesl's got pretty wet too.
We finally made it to the town. There was no post office. The map lied. It was just a box where you can drop letters in.
There were many kind locals along our short walk. These three older guys that lived in the lonely little town tried to help us out, offering us a box for our stuff and a ride to a town that might be able to send our package--no one seemed sure--but they said that it would be very expensive. And we didn't even have the address we'd need to send it to.
My shoulder hurt like hell from my stupid backpack. Liesl's hips hurt horribly from her pack. We had a theoretical conversation about maybe not going the whole way, just walking for a set number of days. Personally I was kind of nervous about the hike because of our time. It generally takes about two weeks, but it could be longer and we need to leave the UK by October 6th. I didn't want to think about what would happen if we didn't leave by then.
Liesl said that two weeks sounded way too long, and I agreed. I was anxious about camping every night, which to me means the prospect of never sleeping well. But we'd feel horrible not going the whole way to Robin Hood's Bays. Our discussion eventually reached the point of, should we just go back? I kind of wanted to just do the hike, make it work, but I also really didn't want to do it. The idea of sleeping in a bed sounded wonderful. The idea of carrying a way too heavy backpack for an indefinite number of miles that could be as many as 200 sounded unbearably horrible. I suggested that we abandon our efforts and come back in the Spring. Liesl thought that would be a better idea than forcing ourselves to do the hike and not enjoying it one bit. We could come back with less stuff, we could plan a route, be prepared, maybe train a bit or something.
We both felt absolutely horrible about not doing the hike. I was satisfied with our decision, but there was still really nothing to feel good about. We'd been planning this hike--or at least been thinking about the fact that we would do it--for nearly a year. We'd bought incredibly expensive camping gear from REI, hundreds of dollars worth of stuff. Merr.
It sounds so lame saying that we quit the hike because our rucksacks were too heavy, but there was more to it than that. For one, we were legitimately concerned that we would seriously injure ourselves carrying that much weight. Blisters on our feet, and a strenuous cardiac workout were things that we'd expected of the Coast to Coast, but shoulder and hip pain from too heavy backpacks were not. We didn't know where to stay each night; we didn't have the money to stay in hostels or B&Bs. Even the camping barn was kind of expensive. Yet wild camping didn't seem possible since we always seemed to be on someone's land. And to be honest, camping the whole way is probably only the way to go if you have some backpacking experience, which neither of us really do. There's just too much stuff to carry. In short, we simply were not prepared for this hike. Literally, emotionally, and maybe even physically. We've been moving around so much in the past two weeks, and it's been very stressful. Not to downplay the hospitality of our multiple hosts, to whom we're very grateful, but just moving from one place to another all the time is very draining. Plus our staying up late and sleeping half the day schedule, not to mention our strange eating patterns. All of this--and more, which I can't think of off the top of my head--come together to make this hike destined to be very unsuccessful.
We walked to Whitehaven, a town with a train station, supposedly two miles away. We probably walked about 5 miles instead of two. Everyone who gave us directions only half gave them. We tried to get a bus. One pulled up and drove right off again. We were sitting at this "bus stop"--really just the wall and overhanging bit without a bench or a bus schedule.
We were starving, so we got out our camping food and turned on our little burner. We made some veggie patties. We realized that we looked extraordinarily like crazy homeless people on drugs, sitting by a bus stop in the rain, covered in mud, wearing layers of strange clothes, with our stuff all over the ground from looking through our packs for the food, cooking mushy looking food with our fingers, laughing hysterically at what our trip had come to. I'd even gone and peed in the bushes, not in some rural place but in a normal suburban area. People seemingly on route to walk by us crossed the street to walk on the other side, or turned early. Come to think of it, we kind of are homeless people right now. Nomads, at the very least.
We'd only gone a couple of miles at this point. We were so sick of those fucking backpacks. We'd both literally considered just leaving them somewhere or throwing our stuff away. It was time to try hitchhiking, something that I'd been hoping to do at least once on our trip. We weren't really sure if the thumb thing was universal, but we kind of did that and sort of waved to cars passing by. Nobody stopped, but we really only tried for a minute. We thought that the station was only a mile away, so hitchhiking seemed silly anyway.
We walked and walked, and got directions, and walked and got directions again, and on and on for some time. Finally we arrived at the station, just five minutes before a train to Carlisle was leaving. We booked tickets to Leeds--50 pounds each, just like the trains to St Bees--with two or three connects, one of the layovers being only four minutes. The train was leaving at about 7 p.m. We didn't even know where we were going to stay that night, the last train wouldn't even arrive until after midnight. Our previous hosts weren't expecting us for two weeks, and we couldn't get through to them. We boarded the train, and at some point connected with Liesl's dad's friend, Simon, who picked us up from the train station. We were supposed to call him at 10 to get through to our actual host.
We missed the next train, due to no fault of ours. It drove off as we ran towards it. A guy that worked there helped us out finding the next train and a different route. He said that they were not allowed to book trains less than eight minutes apart. Basically it was the fault of the guy who booked our trains in Whitehaven. Our new arrival time in Leeds would be at 2 a.m. We had to wait more than an hour for the next train. We got some pizza. We got on the train. We talked to our host, who kindly said that we could stay that night. Though we were willing to just camp on their lawn if it came to that, they left the key for us so we could get inside. They had other guests coming though, so we would have to find somewhere else to go the next night, that now being tonight. Simon offered us a place at his house, just for tonight, so we're very grateful for that.
Both of us fell asleep on the last train. We'd had three connections I think it was. Liesl set an alarm on her phone for us to wake up, and we both missed it the first couple of time. I forced myself to get up, and be awake enough to not miss our stop. It wasn't time to be there yet, but I feared that something had gone wrong and that we'd missed it, just because that would be so fitting. I stared out the window into the dark, trying in vain to tell where we were. Some white letters low on a hill caught my eye. They said Hollywood. I started; what, now we were back in America? As if I wasn't confused enough about everything, now I wasn't even entirely sure what country we were in. (I've honestly no idea why they have a Hollywood sign here).
We arrived in Leeds. Every time we had to get to the next destination we had to put on our stupid backpacks and carry them. We left the station and got a taxi. The driver was nice. The best thing about all of this is that pretty much everyone we'd encountered was very kind to us. So, about 12 hours or so after deciding that we were done with the hike, we arrived at our temporary home, down at least 110 pounds each, not sure of where we would stay for the next two weeks, much less the next three months.
We Skyped with Liesl's dad, who I would just like to take a moment to say is absolutely wonderful, and has been more helpful to us on and before our trip than we could have imagined. We had to talk about what we could possibly do for the next three months. He's found some possible options, but we had to talk about them and fill out some forms. At three in the morning. We did that, and then I went to bed.
We don't even want to talk about the Coast to Coast right now. Maybe we'll come back and do it in the Spring, but that sounds incredibly unappealing at present.
I don't mean to seem down on our whole trip. I'm glad we came, I love England. But we've encountered way more than our fair share of difficulties. Our trip has become a collapsing building, one failed-plan floor falling though to the next, only to have that fall through as well. We're getting pretty close to the ground floor at the moment. Our money is quickly draining away, as is our morale. The point of this trip was to explore the world, learn about different cultures, learn about ourselves, and help other people, and the environment. We didn't go abroad to spend 9 months being tourists. Is wanting to do some community service work too much to ask for?
I just finished repacking my backpack to walk the 1.6 miles to Simon's house. Packing that awful backpack made me feel so many more emotions in such a short amount of time. I couldn't tell whether I was on the verge of sobbing, laughing maniacally and having a nervous breakdown. I think it was pretty much all of them simultaneously. My backpack just gets heavier and heavier each time I pack in, and it gets harder and harder to cram things into it. I'm now literally jumping on it to compress everything so that I can fit in the rest of my stuff. The only extra thing that I have in their is food, so it shouldn't be much heavier. But it is. I'm seriously convinced that it would not pass on the less than 50 lbs airport bag check thing. I just don't have the time and the patience to fold each article of clothing every single fucking time I need to pack the damn thing. I certainly haven't written off chucking the packpack off a cliff.I'm definitely going to get rid of a lot of my stuff, regardless of whether we spend the rest of the nine months living somewhere different every couple of days. I'm pretty sure I'll be a cripple by the end of the month from carrying the thing around. Is it so impossible that it would be better right now to just find a secluded spot in a park or under a bridge or something and just pitch our tent, live there in peace for a while and not have to carry around our backpacks anymore?
I'm going to stop writing now, as I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm becoming rather melodramatic in my upset.
I hope to be in a more positive mood next time I write, but as you can see, the outlook is rather bleak at the moment. Be sure to check back for some pictures of the best part of our Coast to Coast experience--our barbecue at the bus stop.
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