May 30, 2022
Day 14
Appleby-in-Westmorland to Alston
Today’s stage would have been 33 km, and Rosemary’s knee was still really bad, so it was another non-walking day. After breakfast we walked and/or hobbled back to the train station. Today there was a real person there who would happily sell us tickets, so we bypassed the touch screen and we into the ticket office. He sold us tickets from Appleby via Carlisle to Haltwhistle.
We had a bit of a wait, but the 9:54 am train was more or less on time. The ride to Carlisle took about an hour, and we waited there about half an hour before the train to Newcastle departed. Haltwhistle was the first stop, so it wasn’t long before we were there. Our next transport leg was the number 681 bus to Alston. It wouldn’t leave for another hour, but we didn’t want to hobble into town and miss it, because then we would have to wait four hours for the next bus! So we stayed at the train station and ate snack food for lunch.
The shiny new bus left on time and did a loop around the town before heading off to Alston. It came to a pair of stops with two women waiting at the stop across the road — apparently he was doing the loop the wrong way around. The first woman, let’s call her Vera, commented “You’re having a bad day, pet” and then proceeded to give him instructions on where to signal and turn until the bus reached her stop. Her parting words were “You’ll do fine once you meet the main road.”
Our journey from then on went smoothly as far as we could tell. At Alston the route ended just down the street from our hotel, the Alston House Hotel. In front of the hotel were parked some beautiful classic cars, including five very fancy-looking McLaren motor cars. They were expecting us and we headed up to our room. Luckily it was large, with a very large bathroom, as we would be staying here for two nights.
It was now 2 pm so we decided to head (steeply) up the road to find a coffee shop. Alston is not the most inspiring place, and a lot of the shops were closed on Mondays. Or maybe permanently, we couldn’t really tell. But the tea room in the back of the book shop/sweet shop was open, so we had tea and tea cakes.
We had dinner booked for 6 pm at the hotel and they did have good food. Rosemary had lamb shoulder and Paul had sea bass.
May 31, 2022
Day 15
Rest day in Alston
We started out to do some laundry, but then we found out that the hotel would do a bag of laundry for £10. So we chose that option instead. Rosemary called East Midland Railway to see about the refund for our badly delayed trip from London to Sheffield. We had tried to claim it using the web form, but apparently there was a glitch in the system which caused our credit card not to work. We thought that might be because the web form had required a UK address and that didn’t match the card, but anyway we could get the refund as a PayPal credit. But we couldn’t remember what e-mail address the PayPal account was linked to so we were told to call back.
About 10 am we decided to go for a short walk down to the train station, which is the home of the South Tyne steam railway. There were no trains running today, and the museum and coffee shop were closed. But we chatted with one of the volunteers who was doing some minor cleanup. He said that post-pandemic they were having trouble getting their drivers to return to work. We walked a short distance along the South Tyne Railway trail, but then the rain started to pick up so we headed back to the hotel. Rosemary tried to call EMR again but just sat on hold for a long time.
We had lunch at the hotel — sandwiches and hot chocolate — and then returned to the room because the rain was really coming down. Rosemary spent some more time waiting on hold and finally got through to EMR. The refund went to the PayPal account with no problem.
Later it had stopped raining so we went out for a short walk around the village. We stopped at the Co-op and bought some Penguin bars and Tunnock’s caramel wafer biscuits to replenish our snack food supply. On the way back as we turned onto the main road Rosemary tripped on a curb and fell, scraping her hands and one cheek. Fortunately not seriously.
We went down for dinner at 6 pm and got a table by the fire. Paul had Thai curry and Rosemary had lasagna. Back in the room we spent more time researching bus schedules.
Next: Alston to Greenhead
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