"How now, spirit! whither wander you?"
"Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through brier,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
I do wander everywhere."
The last leg (literally on our last legs, as we'd had some knee injuries) took us across tidal flats, squishing through the sand to Lindisfarne. We had lunch on the lovely isle, where the sun had come out to help us celebrate. Some prosecco helped too. We wandered around the abbey, rested and journeyed to Berwick to catch the train back to London in an exhausted heap.
We received warm welcomes in all the towns we went through in Scotland and Northumbria, learning a lot about Northern pronunciation along the way - like 'Berrick' (Berwick), 'Fennick' (Fenwick), and Kirk Yetholm (...there's really no way to render that one phonetically). It was also fun to cross paths with a bunch of friendly travellers along the trail; everyone wants to know a bit about where you're going, or where you're coming from. It's also nice that on a trip like this there is no future or past in the larger sense - only the immediate present of the next turn in the road, the next step, the next destination.
Love,
Annie
*So not much.