August 16+17 Bowness-on-Solway and UIverston

End of Hadrian Wall walk should have a dramatic flourish, but it was rather ho hum, especially because I did it in reverse, taking a taxi to end point and walking back, since a train needed catching and bus ran too late.  But back to The Wall.  Sometimes the way it is described, it sounds as if The Wall is straight out of Game of Thrones:  The North and Beyond The Wall and all that!

An early morning view at Bowness:




Over an hour of this:



With occasional company:



Took trains (there were two) arrived in Ulverston, schelpped suitcase from station and could not find B and B since street sign was missing and sign on door of B and B is most discreet.  A local helped.  Guy who runs the place is extremely nice and let me use the frig.  I just love having use of a frig!

As a rest day excursion, I went on extremely nice "Walk Around Ulverston,"supposedly 11.5 miles but what with finding the way several times (I did this without GPS support) because the instructions were so scanty, it was about 15.  But it turned out to be the prettiest walk so far.  Unfortunately, it was rainy and the rain will continue for a couple of days, which is a shame as the Cumbria Way is the most beautiful section of the whole excursion.

A wee gate:

A number of the park benches are painted like this:

A swan family reunion?

Morecambe Bay:

A quieter section of Morecambe Bay:

These walls impress me more than does Hadrian's Wall.  They go on forever, up hills, down hills.  Exquisite!

On the circular tour of Ulverston, is Swarthmoor Hall, the founding place of the Society of Friends.  The building was really interesting, but I got the audio tour (free with the price of admission!!) which went on for 40 minutes.  The patient narrator drove me nuts and I was not persuaded to convert.

Here is George Fox's traveling bed, which was given to him by Quaker plantation owners in Jamaica in the early 1670s.  Constructed of lignum vitae—said to be the world's heaviest wood—it weighed over a tonne and took two horses to carry it. So much for the simple life.

Leaded glass windows:

George Fox's chair:

I wonder if he was allowed to use it.

Late this afternoon I realised I had not entered GPS data for the Cumbria Way, a potentially disastrous situation.  Without going into detail, let me just say that creating and entering the information is a tedious, time consuming effort, AND after two hours, thinking that at least I had the first day done, thought I had lost all the data, so had to enter part of it again to convert one format to another, after which I would transfer it to GPS.  Meantime, computer is running out of battery and the adaptor is so fussy that the GPS would not connect through it to the computer, but after I talked very nicely to it, and gave it its choice of three ports, it behaved. Only then, like a jealous sibling, the computer would not charge through the adaptor.  Anyway, finally it all worked out.  But for the next several days, I will have an extra two hours of very boring and precise work to do.