6th July continued- the day from hell.

Eventually after another mile we arrived at Chollerford. Tired but happy to see the sign, as you can see from the photos. Still not the driest day, but down to a steady drizzle at this point.

Walked down into the town and looked for a B&B. We couldn't find one. The 'town' was non- existent. There was a roundabout, a bridge, a cafe and a hotel and the houses we had walked past. The hotel was full. We went and sat in the cafe for a brew of tea. We asked about accommodation and were pointed to a couple of ads in the window. Not one of the advertisers would answer the phone. We were told about a pub a couple of miles up the road, but they weren't answering either. Lucy said she would go and check it out because I couldn't go any further. It was raining still. The lady in the cafe was phoning round to try and find us somewhere, the best option seemed to be to go into Hexham on the bus and travel back tomorrow. Lucy got back, the B&B was a lot further than advertized and she had run both ways. I couldn't have walked. It was full. We got up to get the bus and it went past as we got to the roundabout. I nearly cried. I was tired and in pain. We turned back into the cafe and the lady there had managed to get us a twin room at 'The Hadrian' in Wall. It was a lot more than we had wanted to pay but we had no choice. AND we had another mile to walk to get there.

I could hardly put one foot in front of another and Lucy's ankles were really sore from her boots. We had to take off our boots at the door before they would let us in, I didn't think I could do it and Lucy was going to help me, but I couldn't let her. I pulled myself together and took them off. We were shown to our room and the hotelier kindly let us put our wet things in the boiler room to dry overnight. After an hour or so I summoned the energy to take a shower, which hurt like hell on my raw feet, but after a couple of minutes was pure bliss. Lucy was enjoying the tele. but we decided to have tea in the bar and trotted off downstairs.

There were a couple of walkers there from Holland who had kindly agreed to share their holiday cottage with a couple of chaps who were in the same predicament as we had been- no accommodation. Soon we were all sat near each other in the bar. All four of the other walkers had covered at least 20 miles that day, and they were obviously OK. We had done 10.5 and I thought I was going to die.