Prepping for Hadrian's Wall Walk

My scheduled start to walk Hadrian’s Wall path the first part of July is starting to get right into my face.

I have wanted to do this for a couple of decades, and now it’s actually possible. There was always a plethora of reasons I couldn’t, but now I can. There are still “reasons,” but I’m up for this anyway.

First obstacle was simply to get to England. Well, I’m in England. That’s an amazing first step in itself. I’m no longer an ocean away, just a train trip away. A hundred and fifty British pounds round trip.

Then, a pretty good-sized one is that I sold or donated most the camping gear I had left from Scouting when we downsized and sold the Dallas house to go tiny-housing in Missouri. Then, when we sold up in Missouri to come over here, the rest of everything went. OK. I can deal with that. I can buy new kit (that’s the preferred term over here), online or in big-boxes here in London. The consideration becomes: is this going to be a one-shot deal (buy cheap stuff), or am I going to want to do more of this wandering around outside (spend more)? And that branches further into “want to do” and “going to do.” Damn betcha. I want to walk the Santiago de Compostela route. And the very thought of doing the Antonine Wall just makes my spider sense tingle. That’s two right off the top of the bucket list. These are not Kathryn’s idea of fun, so I’d be doing them solo with the blessing, and that’s a definite positive contributor. Kilimanjaro’s on my list, too, for that matter.

The next consideration is: do I stash this stuff on this side of the water? do I donate it or sell it? do I find a place to stash it? do I carry it back with me? Well, Kathryn has bought a basic Janome sewing machine with the British plug and European-current motor. We’re both looking at the stash-or-haul-or-pass-along issue with that as well. Pretty much everything we have accumulated enroute will fit in a single black camping trunk. And we don’t have to have a final decision till right at the end of August.

It’s going to cost me around a hundred-fifty pounds to take the train from London to and from each end of the Wall. It’s going to cost around that same for the gear, unless I go survival-level or minimalist stuff. I don’t really want to go that low; I have very little experience at that . . . mostly gained accidentally. I’ve been pricing out the tent, the sleeping bag, the stove-and-pots, and a rucksack. I’ve also looked at just walking between b-and-b’s and hostels and eating at pubs along the way. Those are reasonably spaced, but there’s no guarantee of space being available. And they’re a little pricey, about double, actually, when you add the cost of prepared meals to that. But considering everything I can think of, it’s pretty much a toss-up which way is more efficient/effective/efficacious. Those facets are different, and they involve juggling weight, cost, fatigue.

I’ve been walking everywhere except where I’ve ridden the trains. I actually walked greater distances in Portugal. It’s wearing, and all I’m carrying is my daypack with water and my notebook and a paperback to read. That’s around three pounds. (That’s the weight of a tent.) My proposed gear for the hike will weigh about eleven pounds plus food and a little more water. I can buy food along the way, so at least I don’t have to tote all of it all all the way. 

It’s frustrating when I just want to hit the road to see what the Romans left on the other side of the hill. I have to admit, though, that snobbery is part of my motivation. There is gear you can buy from the gift shops at each trailhead only with a “passport” stamped at each check-in point along the route. That to me is more valid than the “Stoneman Douglas High School Soccer Team” sweatshirt I saw a couple of days ago on the street. For me, the planning part is the hardest bit of doing anything. But I’m getting better. And to satisfy my Roman craving, there are a dozen sites right here in town including parts of an amphitheater, forts, and even parts of a mithraeum. So when my prepping for the eighty-plus miles of the walk gets burdensome, I can take the tube downtown and see what’s in the city. But that is nott the same, is it?

While I’m in town I can also watch the military pomp and pageantry. Afternoons at four-thirty the Horse Guards present an inspection and changing of the Guard. This tourist-must-see tradition is supposed to have originated in 1894 when Queen Victoria caught the entire Guard drinking and gambling on duty and decreed they would face an inspection every day for the next hundred years! Plus I "need" to see the Churchill War Rooms and a whole herd of other things . . . including that Roman stuff here in town.

Tonight, though, is “The Lion King” at the Lyceum Theatre.

I have to shave and get ready to go; I’ve spent the entire day sitting indoors on and off the keyboard.

From the following day . . . We saw “The Lion King” last night. It was just wonderful. It wasn’t “Hollywood perfect,” but it was just fine. Humans presented it live, all in one go, with no retakes, no edits, no photoshopping. The opening was absolutely spectacular with the gazelle-dancers leaping and cavorting, then the wildebeests, and the panther, and oh! the giraffes! and good-Lord! the elephant! I truly was in tears. It was spectacular. Later in the production a dancer sauntered across the stage with a custom-built tricycle-contraption that had a six or eight gazelles on cams leaping and jumping. Again, just wonderful. And the wildebeest stampede was another piece of stagecraft magic, just magic, even though you could see the rotating cylinder in the darkened chamber churning the wildebeest stampede behind the dancers. It was all the better for that. It wasn’t computer-generated graphics. There was craft, not artifice in it. 

The stage itself rotated, and a circular stair rose on a cam or a hydraulic cylinder to become the cliff where Mufasa and Sarabi present baby Simba. It was a strong statement, but too technically-forward for my aesthetic; in live theater I prefer the obviously-human-powered systems. The boy and girl who portrayed young Simba and young Nala were more than acceptable. They were terrifically competent and accomplished. They disappeared at intermission when Simba came to adulthood, and, frustratingly, did not show up to take their bows. I figure that was because the audience would have given them the greatest applause just because they were so delightful . . . and the lead performers would be overshadowed. But, it’s not my production. I loved it. I’ve seen it. That was enough.

This original was less than nine hundred words, but, hey, it’s done. It edited and revised out the next morning at a tad bit over twelve hundred, but it scans better.

I’m happy with it.