Day 28, Widnes – Carrington (Manchester)

Weather: 🌤️☀️🌤️☀️🌤️
Picnic: 🥪🥪🥪(3 out of 5, first picnic with fresh food, nice company, but need to work on our location!)
Track: 🇬🇧🇬🇧 (2 out of 5, sometimes confusingly signposted trail with a lot of straight old railway line along spring forest with lots of lovely people and sunshine. Trail wise not the most interesting 30km though)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, flat, sheltered and quiet)
Name of followed trail: Trans Pennine trail
Special mention: The lovely lady at the Morrison supermarket, who is probably still in shock that people can want to walk to Istanbul, and to John, the cyclist who once will hopefully go for the complete trans pennine trail! And, last but not least, the 4 youngsters we met in Carrington park near our campspot. I know we left you guys with more questions than answers, but we had an entertaining chat! And to the parents of the youngsters: this time the crazy story they came home with (if it was about people hiking to Istanbul) is actually true😉

We wake up with the sun rising behind the silhouette of the bridge over the Mersey. It’s sunny and going to be warm today, our first real spring day! In the Netherlands we call this ‘rokjesdag’ (skirt day). The day when it’s time for the skirts and summer dresses to come out of the closet and show the white legs some sunshine! So we get our shorts and sunscreen out and start our hike of the day.

We hike along the banks of Spike island and follow the Mersey river until we get to a canal. then we follow the canal for quite a while. When we get to a bridge, we spot a supermarket , so we go for Elevensies here! While we are having our rolls with cheese, grapes and drinks just outside of the supermarket, a lovely lady comes to us and asks about our hiking destination. The answer leaves her in a bit of a shock, and a fun conversation follows. She wishes us all the best, we shake hands and both go our separate ways again. Shortly after we leave the supermarket John, a cyclist, asks us if we are on ‘the trail’. We confirm, and tell him the trail is longer than just the English part. He says he’d like to cycle the Trans Pennine one day. John, I hope you’ll go for it!

We get a change of scenery when we get onto an old railway line, with some lovely green spring forest along the sides. We follow the railwayline for at least 10 km, and like the waterway, it’s pretty much straight. It makes for great progress, but it does get boring at some point.

I’ll be honest, it doesn’t help that it’s our 2nd 30 km day, so my body is starting to feel tired.

We have a rest near a care home and go for some wraps. 2nd picnic, you could call it I guess. We have a chat with the people of the care home that are out to enjoy the sun. It’s nice to have all the time in the world for things like this! We get back on the railway line and meet another cyclist we can surprise with our story.

Before we make camp, we get some water at the supermarket near the trail. Just before we get into the treeline to pitch our tent, we meet 4 youngsters hanging around in the park. we have a very entertaining chat, for all of us. The amount of unexpected questions for us, and the improbable answers for them. Questions like: It’s just been Easter!, how do you do that? And with Christmas and birthdays?, how long does a mile take (5 mins?), what’s a kilometer, what do you eat, (foxes?), how can you get to Turkey from here, why don’t you take a plane, etc, have all been answered. I’m still not sure if they believed that people actually do this. So guys, if you read this: we really are doing this, and we found a nice spot to camp 🙂.