By June 2018, my running buddy and I had been going out running together for a while and we figured it would be nice to give some purpose to the runs we were doing, so we decided we were going to set ourselves a first challenge, which was to try and complete a Coast to Coast in the summer. The route took us from Tynemouth (NE) to Bowness-on-Solway (NW) between June and September.
As we were during the summer months we definitely experienced all aspects of UK summer weather, going from sunny and warm over hot and humid, cold and windy to even thunder storms with hail stones falling from the sky.
Following Hadrian’s Wall as much as we could, we had some lovely days out but also some very challenging ones. It has to be said that some of the more challenging days are exactly the ones that we’ll remember the most.
The biggest highlight on this run are undoubtedly the parts where we ran across the hills in Northumberland alongside (or on top of) Hadrian’s wall, going past the so-called “Sycamore Gap” (with the famous tree from “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves”) and taking us over Steel Rigg across tough, hilly and rocky terrain.
Total Distance:
Number of runs: 12
Start and finish for each run:
1 Tynemouth – Wallsend
2 Wallsend – Newcastle
3 Newcastle – Newburn
4 Newburn – Ovingham
5 Ovingham – Riding Mill
6 Riding Mill – Hexham
7 Hexham – Chollerford
8 Chollerford – Twice Brewed
9 Twice Brewed – Banks
10 Banks – Newtown
11 Newtown – Carlisle
12 Carlisle – Bowness-on-Solway
Confessions of a Running Freak 