COAST-TO-COAST WALK Day 2

Who is God? God is Almighty
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said,
"I am God Almighty;
walk before me and be blameless."
Genesis 17:1

Our New Home

Our new home is in Toowoomba, Australia's largest inland city, 140 km west of Brisbane. 
Toowoomba is known as the Garden City because it has 200 parks and gardens!

Many beautiful and established trees grow in the park
over the road from our new home.
Our green painted home can be spotted in the background. 

I think we will like living in Toowoomba!

The Great Outdoors

Memories of England's Coast-to-Coast Walk  Sunday10^th July, 2005 
Today I enjoyed my very first ever English Breakfast at an English B&B, black pudding and all! Black pudding is a blend of onion, pork fat, oatmeal, flavourings and congealed blood - usually from a pig. It was actually quite nice.
I had never been on a mining steam train before today, and I got to ride on several different locos on our "fun-day-out" before beginning our long hike.

Here is hubby's daily diary.....  

Day 2                                                                             

St. Bees – Ravensglass Railway – and back to St Bees

After a great night’s sleep, we woke to a fine day. We enjoyed the cooked English breakfast at Tomlin House – very filling – and we made our way to the bus stop near the St. Bees Railway Station to catch a bus to Ravensglass for a day out!

The bus ride to Ravensglass was beautiful if not a little hairy – narrow country lanes, cars parked on both sides of the road through the towns. The bus travelled at top speed! Fare was £5.20 each, but the bus driver could have charged us £2.10 each for a Cumbria Day Rover, advertised on the front of the bus, but not visible to us as we boarded. One local traveller was annoyed that we were not charged the cheaper fare.   

Ravensglass is a small township built on the beach at the junction of a river.  It has a main-line station and is the terminal for the 15 inch narrow gauge, the old mining line, called “The Ratty” which now takes tourists 7 miles into the Esk Valley.  The sun was shining as we bought our steam-train tickets (£8.50 return each) and made our way along one of the station’s platforms to sit in a narrow, open-topped carriage awaiting our departure. 

Travelling to Esk Green Station, riding just behind the tender.
Not a good idea, as Denise got some soot in her eye!

At 11:30 a.m., we moved off at quite a surprising pace, rattling along in a little steam-loco enjoying the cool breeze.  The steam loco, beating along quickly, confidently hauled our train of 12 carriages, mostly full of passengers.  We wound our way through woods and river banks, through open country and narrow gorges – and of course, past the un-used iron ore mine sites that dot the journey.  We arrived at the terminus, a little station just below the village of Boot. The loco was un-hooked and turned by hand on the turn-table, then reversed down the line and backed onto the other 
end of the train for the return trip.

Two of the old mining steamtrains at Ravensglass
pass each other 

The “Ratty” is a busy line with several steam trains operating. We travelled on three different steam trains throughout the day, stopping at villages along the route.   Hayfever was a problem and Denise and I were sneezing and eyes were itching from the wind.  We walked up to Boot, looked around the oldest working water-mill in England, then back along the lanes to the station.  This time, we caught a different loco, a green 2-8-0, immaculately kept yet more than 150 years old.  On this section of the journey, we sat just behind the tender for a memorable ride to Esk Green Station.  Here we went in search of a camping shop in the village, looking for metholated spirits    for our Trangia camping cooker.  We had already discovered that metho is a rare item in England!

We roamed along narrow lanes which were dangerously busy with Sunday traffic, and eventually we found the camping shop which only had one bottle of metho on the shelf! It was an excellent camping store, and Denise bought a hiking shirt and some hiking boots, only having hiking sneakers.  When she had previously tried to “wear in” the new hiking boots she had bought 6 months earlier for the trip, she had much difficulty with them so was not using them.   

Back to the station – we were sweating now!  It was quite hot.  We ate lunch on the platform and waited out 40 minutes for the next steam train. The sky was very busy and throughout our wait, there was a constant low rumble up above – with 2 jets-to-Coast  in the sky almost continuously. We caught the train back  to the Ravensglass train terminus, then boarded a bus for the Prand-Prix drive returning us to Tomlin House at St. Bees.  Up on the 3^rd floor in the attic room, it was a little warm – temperature outside was around 27 ° C.  We packed our rucksacks in preparation for setting off on our long hike the following morning and we went to bed at 10 p.m. 

I walked to the beach just before bed – what a fantastic view!  The orange sun had disappeared beyond St. Bees, leaving its light glinting on some far away houses and boats out at sea.  The sea was turquoise and there was not a cloud in the sky.  The Isle of Man stood out clearly on the horizon.  The beach was lined with rounded grey-brown pebbles and I sat for a while just lost in the wonder of it all.

May we not be afraid to try someone else's cooking, even black pudding!

from Robyn

painting of robin by Brenda, my mum