Summer Holiday 2020: Day 4

Sycamore Gap and Haltwhistle Burn

After a couple of full-on days we decided to take it a little easier today, just doing a couple of things, one right from the campsite so less driving too.

After a lot of laughs over breakfast we headed out to Steel Rigg car park hoping that it’d be quiet enough for us to get a space as it’s not a very big car park.

When we arrived the main car park was already full – clearly lots of other people had decided to take advantage of the slightly better weather and do the walk out to Sycamore gap? – so we ended up in the not-so-good, slightly muddy and boggy, overflow car park, managing to find a spot that wouldn’t mean getting stuck if the rain decided to hit us again.

We headed out along Hadrian’s Wall, up and down the steep hills before getting to Sycamore Gap. This was made famous in a prominent scene in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Not that I knew that when I strolled past it back in 2010 mind. To me back then it was a tree, and having slogged my way up and down the hills I probably didn’t even notice it!

We took a break, taking photos and having a snack, before taking the easier path back to the car park. Well, not quite all the way back to the car park. At the start of the section along the wall there was a really steep climb, one that the girls and Shelli said they weren’t looking forward to on the way back, so I hoped the other path would take us around that point, but I was wrong. We ended up right at the top of it! They all made it down safely though.

The rest of the afternoon we chilled out at the campsite before getting showered and changed ready for dinner at the Manor House Inn in Haltwhistle.

Fed and watered we headed back to the campsite, changed into our walking boots, and went to investigate Haltwhistle Burn, a river that ran past the campsite and down into Haltwhistle. The path we took to the river had a warning sign saying that some of the path had eroded, but ever the adventurous lot that we are we disregarded the sign and headed off over the hill to see what awaited us.

The path had indeed fallen into a bit of a sorry state as you made your way down to the river but we all got down without too many problems. From there the riverside path was really good so we took an easy stroll, having fun throwing stones into the river and just enjoying the peace and quiet before making our way back uphill to the campsite, enjoying an amazing sunset on the way.

The river was a really nice place to spend some time but I do have to wonder how many people miss seeing it as it’s not exactly obvious, from the campsite or Haltwhistle from what I could gather?

Photos

The Good Camera

Darren’s iPhone

Shelli’s iPhone

Alice’s Camera

Videos

Route