Day 10 Saturday 23rd Newcastle-Carlisle-Liverpool

Day 10 Saturday 23rd May 2009. Newcastle- Carlisle-Liverpool.
After an unhurried start we left Newcastle on the 9:24am commuter train for Carlisle and arrived there 4minutes late at 10:54. We had a one hour wait at Carlisle. After leaving Carlisle we started gaining altitude and within twenty minutes we had climbed about 100 meters. The country side was still beautiful except that the land rolled a little higher. 50 minutes out we were seeing hills on the horizon for the first time and were at 200metres for the first time in England. The country side is now like New Zealand. One hour along the way we have reached an altitude of three hundred meters. A little later we peaked at 350meters. All the fences are now rock walls. At 1:05 we exited from a long tunnel into a beautiful soft pine forest. There are 14 tunnels on the line from Carlisle to Leeds, the longest in 2629 yards. There are 17 viaducts on the line. We stopped at several stations on the Yorkshire Dales; a lot of hikers got on and off the train. The route from Carlisle to Settle (about ½ way) has been declared a historic scenic route. There were lots of small villages on the way. We arrived at Leeds on time at 2:37pm. We moved to platform 16 and boarded the 3:08pm train for Liverpool. The train was crowded when we left Leeds. With no spare seats left in first class. We arrived at Liverpool on time at 4:57pm. We had a short walk to our hotel. We all joined our Leader John at 7pm for our evening meal.