A return to Darlington to resume my walk on the E2.
After months toiling on the renovation of our house, with all the stresses, decisions and problems such work involves, I was looking forward to something completely different. Not that the project was finished, I felt guilty leaving my wife to deal alone with the workmen building our new garage. This was not my only worry restarting my travels. Two weeks earlier an opportunity arose to visit the North of England, and I thought I would fill in some spare time this trip offered by completing some training walks. The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge is a 40 kilometre circuit over three summits, Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, a hike I had long thought of completing. I successfully managed to complete it in under the requisite 12 hours despite the blustery wind threatening to push me over, and hard hitting rain. Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England, was my next challenge. Again I succeeded despite snow and a near total lack of visibility. Thankfully I had my GPS for navigation and where they had not been obliterated by the wind, some footsteps to follow in the snow. My achievements in pitting myself against nature was undermined by a deterioration in my left knee. Fluid accumulated in the various bursas around the joint, limiting its movement. I had stupidly pushed too hard, too quickly. As I struggled across the snowy, slippery, surfaces on a boulder field near the summit of Scafell, the angle of the rocks and holes between them hidden by snow, I knew my knee would suffer from my stumbling into unseen cavities. The fluid filled cavities around my knee where not the only bursas to concern me. Probably as a result of work on our house I had developed a big bursa on my elbow. But these things were not my main health problem.
Somewhere I caught a cold, not a normal, common cold, but a hacking, cannot catch your breath, cannot stop coughing cold, complete with a painful throat. On the weekend, a week before my planned departure to Darlington, I had arranged a stall at the National Outdoor Expo in Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre. Here I extolled the benefits of the Long Distance Walkers Association (LDWA) and tried to sell copies of my book "Six Pairs of Boots: Spain to Cyprus on the E4 Trail" and the LDWA Recipe book. On Saturday I had reasonable success but by Sunday the combination of my cold and talking all the previous day meant I completely lost my voice. I was fortunate to be working with two other admirable members of the LDWA as I was reduced to a whispering, although I worried that I might pass my illness onto them,
Recovery from my cold stalled and I worried my condition with deteriorate into a serious respiratory illness. As a minimum I feared I would need to postpone my trip. However, as predicted by my wise wife, who is so often right, on Friday my health improved so that by Monday I felt well enough to begin the next section of my walk on the E2 as planned.
From Darlington where I ended my last trip the E2 continues down the Teesdale Way, before joining a succession of long distance paths to reach Harwich and the ferry for the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands. The most important of these trails were the Cleveland Way, Yorkshire Wolds Way, Viking Way, Hereward Way and Stour Valley Path.
The trip began with a railway journey back to Darlington. I had hoped to buy a coffee and sandwich for lunch on the train, however this involved scanning a QR code and signing onto the WiFi. As the latter involved providing a large amount of information unrelated to my choice of sandwich (my home address, full name and possibly the name of my first pet dog if I had got that far) I gave up in disgust. There was some mumbling on the loud speaker that may have referred to other catering options but to me it was intelligible. Instead, while munching on my emergency rations, I looked out at the flatlands north of Peterborough, which I hoped to be walking across in the few weeks time, as nearby hedgerows and fields flashed by.
I made up for my lack of lunch in the red brick town of Darlington with a rather large piece of cake, after which I bought some apples, guilty at such an unhealthy choice of food. Then I wondered around the centre of Darlington in the afternoon sun before retiring to my hotel with a takeaway to watch whatever was on TV.
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