Hadrian's Wall Path: Day 6, continued

It's been really hard to figure out distances along the way.  It was between 17 and 20 miles on bikes from Heddon-on-the-Wall to Tynemouth.  In full sun, unusual for England, of course, and 25°C/77°F hot -- had it been like that the whole time I don't think the trip would've been as pleasant as it was.  Mom's knees were bothering her, and to be honest I started to get really frustrated because I knew we weren't covering enough distance in enough time, so after grabbing a sandwich, she took a cab to Tynemouth.  Apparently it's a common occurrence -- and I just took the front wheel off the bike and we stuck it all in the cab.

This is pretty much the only photo I took on the east side of Newcastle while on the cycleway

We had agreed to meet at Segedunum, but once I got there, I called the B&B in Tynemouth to tell them to ask her not to come, because by that point I realized how far I still had to go, but the room was locked and she wasn't answering the door but they didn't think she'd left.  Turns out, she did get to Segedunum, Wallsend and I wasn't hearing my phone, because after refilling my water bottle and snarfing down some ice cream, I continued on to Tynemouth, which was another 5+ miles away.  Finally we straightened everything out and she got back to Tynemouth and we had some divine fish and chips.

As I was biking along near the former shipyards along the River Tyne, almost every signpost said Tynemouth, 5 miles.  So some of them were wrong, and it was getting nutty.  Once I got up the last hill in Tynemouth, I should've been overwhelmed with English Heritage and the Tynemouth Priory, but I just wanted to take a shower.  By that point, I was questioning the English ability to accurately measure distances, and I couldn't get the shower on -- turns out, I had to flip a switch outside the bathroom in order to get the water heater to even release the water in the shower.  Who knew.  If I didn't know better, I'd think they were slightly backward with all of the switches everywhere here.

So mom and I were happily reunited, had fish and chips, and walked around Tynemouth.

This was seriously great fish and chips