Falstone to Byrness

8 July 2011 - Falstone to Byrness

Distance - 15.8 miles

Weather - Sunny to start, ending with a few showers

We had a good idea of what our last day's walking would be like, nice short ten mile stroll through forest, plenty of time to catch the bus to Edinburgh from Byrness at 17:25. Accordingly, we arranged for a lateish breakfast.

Despite the energetic previous day, I didn't have a good sleep, thanks to someone snoring loudly nearby all night. Not a great start for me. Then I thought about the day ahead and had a read of the guide. Oh dear! It turns out that the ten miles consists of fighting through trees, stumbling around never-walked paths and to cap it off a two and a half mile bog trail, with a warning at the end - 'if you do not re enter the forest at this stile, you will be hopelessly lost.'

Spot the overgrown APW sign

Consultation with our landlord after breakfast provided more evidence. Someone had followed the APW a The moor is two miles by six miles of mire. If he'd been wandering over that for a few miles, he'd have been exhausted. We decided not to follow his example.
few years previously and had got lost. All his equipment had failed, except his phone. He called 999, a helicopter picked him up and he was charged £1,800. Bargain! 

Distant view of Kielder Water

The map shows forest roads pretty accurately and we could make out a path avoiding the moor, along forest track. It was  longer- nearly sixteen miles - but we reckoned it would be far less risk. After a few hours we checked the GPS to see how we were doing. In three hours, we had covered six and a half miles. That was really bad, we thought we were going much faster. At this rate, we'd be lucky to catch the bus. As you can imagine, we walked quicker.

We saw some nice things along here - the moor, in the distance; a deer with a fawn - they never noticed us until we were really close; a pasture appearing from nowhere; Kielder Water - the largest man-made lake in Europe fifteen years ago - appearing over the rim of a dam so big it looks part of the countryside. After a while we had another status check. In the last hour we had come five miles. We didn't think we'd gone as fast as that. We felt a lot more confident about catching the bus.

Forest road walking

We joined onto the Pennine Way along here. They had a really posh road, with the remains of tarmac.

Navigating through the forest would have been quite precarious without GPS, generally we used it to confirm that we were where we thought we were. We noticed several forest roads which didn't appear on the map. If we had been looking for, say the second turn on the left, we might have had problems. As it was, all our junctions were T-junctions, forks or the occasional crossroad.

The Pennine Way nearly meets the A68 about two miles from the bus stop. There was a little picnic ground here and we stopped for our first break of the walk. There also was a Public Convenience here (which stands for Probably Closed) which we sheltered in when it began persisting down. It wasn't a long stop, and we were soon on our way. We followed the Pennine Way to Byrness, rather than walk the A68. The A68 through Byrness is populated by drivers who are either psychic or suicidal or murderous. The Pennine Way, in comparison, has a nice river dawdling along beside it.

We arrived in Byrness at 15:30 with plenty of time to spare. We were at a bit of a loss what to do with a couple of hours. Luckily we found a hostel, which did teas and we sat in the garden for a couple of hours, sheltering in their bike shed when it rained. They did invite us in, but I didn't want to take off my boots, in case they didn't go back on again.

We toddled up to the bus stop at 17:03 (20 mins early) and waited for the bus. And waited. We had been warned that this bus is sometimes a bit late, as it comes from Wrexham via Newcastle. When it was just ten minutes late, a half-sized, unmarked bus came along. Was this our bus? It didn't say 'National Express.' It didn't have a service number. We looked at it enquiringly. It accelerated past us. Another fifteen minutes later we we thought it probably was ours, which given there is only one bus per day was a bit sad.

After nearly three quarters of an hour we were trying to call National Express to find what was going on, when a bus, a National Express bus, OUR National Express bus, came round the corner. Hooray! Luckily it still got us into Edinburgh in time for us to catch the 20:03 train to Stirling.

Bus fare from Byrness to Edinburgh around £25.00 for two adults
Train fare from Edinburgh Waverley to Stirling around £16.00