Walking the Pennine Way When I Was Eleven - Stage 16: Once Brewed to Bellingham

Start: Once Brewed
Finish: Bellingham
Distance: 17 miles
Total Distance Walked: 220 miles
We left the busy campsite at Once Brewed, but as we did so said a final farewell to "Skinless" who we had met regularly since Day 6 of the walk. He had sustained an injury and had decided to rest for a day. We were soon at Hadrian's Wall and followed it on an undulating course for two miles. We had managed to stay on course nearly all the way but for a short distance here we took the wrong route. We found ourselves reaching a marshy area with tall reeds next to a small lake, Crag Lough, under a steep cliff close to the wall and realised we needed to retrace our steps to get up to the top of the hill.
We left the Wall without making the short diversion to Housesteads fort as we needed to push on. I had started to feel a bit of pain in my hamstring and when I mentioned it my Dad said if it got worse we would stop the walk. As we had now done more than 200 miles I was in no mood to quit. The leg didn't get worse and I wouldn't have said anything if it had.
The next section of the walk was rather tedious as we went through long sections of conifer woodland in Wark Forest. The paths were long and straight with trees obscuring the view in every other direction. It was easy walking but dull and at one point I was bitten by a horse fly.
On one of the stages near the end of the Pennine Way, it may well have been this one but I don't recall exactly, my sister lost a jumper with a panda on it. I had to wait for an hour or so by the side of a track with our rucksacks while she and my father retraced our steps to find it. I was getting worried but they returned having found the jumper.
Things improved a bit as we reached the end of the forests and went through farmland and fields. As we went past one farm a few miles from our destination of Bellingham there was a sign saying that they did refreshments. We had made good enough progress to allow us to stop for tea there before completing the day's walk. Bellingham was a reasonably sized place and we stopped at a campsite for the last time on the Pennine Way.
We had a meal at a pub called the Black Bull where we met a quite elderly man who was walking the Pennine Way. He was impressed by our walk and gave my father a five pound note for each of us if we made it all the way. We were only forty-five miles from the end and were sure we would make it.

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