Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 6

The best thing about B&Bs is the free full English breakfast you get in the morning. Well, technically it’s not free, but I like to pretend it is. It’s a good start to the day.


From Carlisle the walk is totally flat, and it gets flatter. It’s so flat, every bump above 5 feet seems like a mountain. On such bumps one finds villages huddled like desperate sailors on desert islands, usually including a medieval church built from Roman stone.


One of the last sections of the path follows the course of a 3-mile long dyke built to protect against flooding from the Solway. I think I saw more people along that stretch than anywhere else on the walk – it was a Saturday in July, so a lot of hikers were just starting the hike from west to east.


A mile or two before the end I stopped at a pub and had a steak and ale pie for lunch. When I first walked in the barman saw my rucksack and said, “Bloody hell, have you brought the kitchen sink an’ all?” So I replied no, that would be a stupid thing to take on a hike, and he was an idiot for even suggesting it.

Then I walked to the finish line, which is in Bowness-on-Solway, a village on the edge of the known world to which nobody ever goes for any reason at all, except walking Hadrian’s Wall Path. They’ve made a cute hut and terraced garden overlooking the windswept mudflats of the Solway Firth.


And then I went for a pint of Guinness in the village pub, where I saw a big cardboard cutout of a Roman.


And then I went home.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 5

Not much of the Wall survives above ground after Banks, but the walk follows its former course across pretty rolling meadows and babbling brooks, passing through occasional hamlets.

Shortly before the hamlet of Walton I came across some picnic benches and a sign pointing through a hedge to ‘The Haytongate Hut: Drinks and Snacks’.


Fearing a trap – my enemies are never far behind – I crept through gingerly. Luckily my enemies had not yet prepared themselves, for the place was deserted. I saw one hut filled with chocolate bars, crisps and refrigerated drinks. There was an honesty box and the inside walls were papered with post-it notes on which people had scrawled little messages of thanks or celebration or mutual encouragement.


I smashed the place to bits, pissed in the corner, ate all the free chocolates and used the wrappers to spell SUCKERS on the floor, and moved on.

After Walton the path veered off into some dark and damp woods. Deep in these woods was a farm offering bunkhouse accommodation. This is the sign erected by the farmer to lure weary hikers into his snare.


I think he needs to hire some advertising advisors. I'd been warned about this sign in advance by some other hikers who'd stayed at the bunkhouse (and survived) while walking the path in the opposite direction. The farmer had told them that he nailed dead crows to the sign "as a warning to the rest."

At lunchtime I lay down to rest under a tree in a graveyard. All in all it was rather a morbid day.


It always seems to happen that after about four days of hiking I start getting proper muscle strains, and this time it was my achille’s tendon that left me limping the last seven miles to Carlisle, stopping every mile or so to let the pain subside (I forgot to take anti-inflammatory drugs with me). I basically need to start doing longer hikes, going more slowly at the start, so I don’t always spend the final couple of days hobbling.


Carlisle is pretty; I went for a walk after I checked into the B&B but forgot to take my camera, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Carlisle cathedral is weird though.

The B&B owner was very nice. He upgraded me to a double room because the place was almost empty, and recommended a great curry house where I sat reading a book about Hadian’s Wall and stuffing my face.

Then I went back to the B&B and turned on the TV to be confronted with the early reports on Anders Breivik’s shooting spree in Norway. That wasn’t such a cheerful end to the day.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 4, part 2

Just after Greenhead, the path came to Thirlwall, a hamlet overlooked by a little castle on a hillock, built from robbed Roman stone, which made me mad. So I smashed the castle up. This is what it looked like after I was finished with it.

This bullshit story was on the 'information' panel for Thirlwall Castle, it's complete rubbish, there's no such thing as magic

I also found a cat which had been grafted onto a stone by some sick monster.


Past Gisland, the Wall runs in a tidy straight line down to the river Irthing, which it crossed over a substantial bridge whose massive foundations can still be seen.


On the far side of the steep valley stands Birdoswald fort. I was excited about Birdoswald because it has a museum and stuff. It also has a fake Roman shouting from a fake rampart.


Best of all, though, is the site of the granary in the fort, where excavators found evidence for a massive post-Roman timber hall. They marked the positions of the main posts with wooden bollards, as you can see here.


The information boards show what the granary was like in Roman times...


... and then what it was like in the Dark Ages.


The theory is that Birdoswald, after the Roman withdrawal, became the headquarters of a chieftain or petty king, one of the many local strongmen who must have exploited the power vacuum left by the empire.

I admit I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to the sub-Roman period. A few years ago I saw ‘The Not So Dark Ages’, a documentary by the prehistorian Francis Pryor, in which he knocked down a series of cunningly erected straw men to show that the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ were actually a vibrant and sophisticated era in British history.


The documentary included a stroll around Birdoswald, and the argument that things kept ticking along smoothly after the end of the empire. Pryor also used evidence of pollen analysis to argue that there was no mass re-forestation of Hadrian’s Wall, which would be one knock-on effect of population decline and reduced farming.

As far as I can tell, Birdoswald shows pretty clearly how far things declined in the sub-Roman period. The elite were no longer able even to maintain the stone buildings around them, let alone build new ones. Instead they lived in the crumbling shell of a far more technologically advanced civilisation. When one granary building collapsed, they moved into the neighbouring one; only when that one also collapse did they erect their own timber hall.


As for the pollen analysis, from the documentary itself it looks to me like the fifth century saw a massive increase in alder woodland on Hadrian’s Wall, and a mirror-image reduction in heather and grassland, while by the sixth century very few cultivated grains were turning up in the samples. But then I’m not an expert in pollen analysis.

Basically I’m of the opinion that after the withdrawal of Rome from Britain, the population dwindled, the economy contracted, agriculture returned to near-subsistence levels, and the former British provinces fragmented into tiny warring polities which hardly deserve the title of ‘kingdoms’. I do get irritated by post-Roman apologists who seem reluctant to concede that the end of the empire led to a systemic collapse across the board.


Anyway, once I’d finished kicking over the gay little wooden bollards and spray-painting ROMANS RULE on the walls of the fort, I walked the few remaining miles to a campsite at the hamlet of Banks, where I accidentally camped in someone’s back garden.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 4, part 1

From Steel Rigg westwards was probably my favourite section of the Wall, although the fact that the weather turned nice may have been a factor. Also, I saw far fewer people, at least until I reached Greenhead.

Looking back to the east from Steel Rigg

At the highest point of the Wall (not very high)

Milecastle 42 is another ingeniously situated fortification, accessible from the north only up an impractically steep bank. There is no reason for this at all, except for asinine military planning. In this capture from Google Earth you can see the Wall running down the ridge from the top left, and the rectangular milecastle near the bottom.


If the engineers had shifted the milecastle just 50 yards to the right, the gate would have been placed in the convenient cleft where the modern lane runs. But the boneheads obviously didn't do this. I suppose this strict, inflexible level of regimentation helps explain both the success and the ultimate failure of the Roman empire...

Just before Greenhead is the best-preserved section of the Wall, which in places survives above head height. It's the most amazing thing in the world.

Hadrian's Wall

The so-called 'Great Wall' of China

I didn’t have time to stop at the Roman Army Museum near Greenhead, but at noon I did pause at a visitor centre, where I was stalked by a chaffinch who wanted my ice cream.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 3, part 2

From Housesteads the Wall climbs and dips along the ridges towards the west: over Cuddy’s Crags, Hotbank Crags, Highshield Crags and Steel Rigg. I’ve walked this section on a bright, windy day, when the moors feel vast and open, and broken cloud-shadows glide swiftly over the folds of the land.

From an earlier trip, when the weather was less shitty

Today, though, cloud was everywhere, and everywhere was damp. Not that it mattered, with so much of interest to see. At milecastle 37 you find the arch of the northern gate with its springs still in place, as well preserved as any on the Wall.



A little farther the path takes a sudden dip into Sycamore Gap, where you see what is now popularly known as the Robin Hood Tree. This spot, as Hollywood has taught us, was once part of Nottinghamshire.


Scramble up the path on the other side of the gap, and there is a fine view of milecastle 39, whose north gate leads directly to a sheer drop from the crag. This makes the gate useless from a practical point of view, but it does demonstrate the strict by-the-book mindset of the Roman engineers, who insisted on placing their milecastles at precisely regular distances. There’s an even better example of this peculiar sort of military madness farther west.


And coming to Steel Rigg, here is a fine view of one of the turrets originally built between the milecastles. The turrets were systematically demolished by the Romans later in the second century, presumably because they were no longer considered necessary for the functioning of the Wall.


I left the path at Steel Rigg and finished my third day at Once Brewed youth hostel. I wanted to stay here mainly for nostalgic reasons, as I stayed here with Dunk thirteen years ago (almost to the day) during our Land’s End to John O’Groat’s bike ride.


I arrived two hours before the hostel opened, so I sat and drank more tea and hot chocolate in the neighbouring visitor centre. In my bunk room were two oldish men, also long-distance walkers. One of them was doing the Pennine Way, but had just decided to quit after two weeks of continual rain. Unluckily for him, the weather decided to improve the next day...

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 3, part 1

Those poor Romans. What did even the height of summer have to offer them here, on these wild, craggy moors that collar the neck of Britain?


If the Wall crosses the neck of Britain, then the high ground between the valleys of the North Tyne and the Irthing is its throat. The land is scrubby and rough, broken by outcrops of limestone and the great rupturing ridges of volcanic rock that rise gently from the south and fall sharply to the north: a most suggestive natural defence whose potential must have made Hadrian’s engineers giddy with excitement.

Probably the giddiness wore off when the diggers of the north ditch reached Limestone Corner: at any rate, having made a frustrated attempt to smash their way through and clear the ditch of boulders, they threw down their tools and called it a day.

Screw this

These were the upland pastures where the farmers of the river valleys found summertime grazing for their stock. Every spring the hills were invaded by legions of goats and cattle, driven up paths well-worn since prehistory. Many of these paths and grazing lands must have been severed when the Romans built their wall, and doubtless the auxiliary troops garrisoned here had a busy time regulating the transit of flocks and herds at the beginning and end of summer. It gave them something to do, at least.

It was early morning, two days by foot from the conurbation of Newcastle, a day removed from the tourist hotspots of Housesteads and Vindolanda, and the weather was uninspiring: damp, cold, foggy. Outside Carrawborough – the old fort nothing but a fenced-off field of grassy tufts – the temple of Mithras squats beside a little boggy stream.


I had the place to myself. The temple was ankle-deep in rainwater, as quiet and still as a tomb. No doubt Mithras was below in his cave, wrapped up warm against the Northumbrian chill. The last time I was here, on a university field trip, a coachload of American tourists appeared and their leader ceremonially placed a rubber chicken on the high altar. Even this sacrilege had not been enough for the god to emerge in anger.


The next few miles were quiet except for a couple of determined hikers. There were times when the distant road was empty of traffic and the only sounds were the soft patter of rain and the bleating of far-off sheep, muted by the fog. Strangely absent were birds; only later, when the rain paused, did they emerge, seemingly from nowhere, and swarmed the air above me in a banquet of bugs.

Heading west to Housesteads

A mile or so before Housesteads, the public began to appear: daytrippers, Roman enthusiasts, families. This is the most famous and most dramatic part of the Wall, where it rises up and down the switchback-like convulsions of the Great Whin Sill. Housesteads is also one the best preserved forts, built at the top of a volcanic ramp, with a civilian settlement huddled below it.

Approaching Housesteads

The surrounding slopes are striped with cultivation terraces, for the soil here was richly suited for crops in Roman times, and this was not so much a lonely garrison outpost as a bustling community of troops, farmers, retired veterans and their families.

From a previous trip to Housesteads

I skipped the fort, since I had visited it twice already in the last year, and went down to the visitor centre, drawn by the prospect of tea and a dry place to sit. My backpack was heavy enough, but I couldn’t resist buying this book by Alistair Moffat – a little thematic reading to keep me entertained in the evenings.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 2, part 2

Later on the downpour hit, rain as heavy as I’ve ever seen in fair Albion. I took shelter under the thick roof of an oak tree, hoping it would pass over, but this hope soon passed. So I decided to put my waterproof gear to the test, since I was lugging it around with me anyway. Backpack cover, coat, trousers and gaiters all deployed, I headed out into the maelstrom.

Soon I passed Mr Japanese Predator, who was hiding under a tree. The path turned down a steep country lane which had turned into an inch-deep torrent as the floodwater poured down from the high ground. Happily, my new boots performed well, and my feet were still dry an hour later when I reached a café at Chollerford.

The river North Tyne at Chollerford. There was once a really big and impressive Roman bridge here. You need to use a bit of imagination though.

After spending five minutes peeling off my waterproof layers so as not to soak their nice clean floor, I hammered my fist on the nearest table and demanded a pot of tea. By the time I finished it the worst of the storm had blown over, and I was ready to continue the remaining three miles to the next campsite.

A Roman turret

From Chollerford, site of a major Roman bridge and the fort of Chesters (I didn’t stop, since I’ve seen them before), the Wall – visible again for the first time since Heddon-on-the-Wall – climbs steadily up to the moorlands of the central section. The campsite was on a farm about a half-mile from the path, down a dirt track; it was starting to rain again, so I was glad to see that the farm also had a bunk barn.


A bunk cost £10 instead of the £5 for a camp pitch, but it was warm and dry, and I was doubly glad for the upgrade when I opened my rucksack and found that my sleeping bag was wet through. I cooked noodles on my stove in an adjacent junk barn, watching swallows flit in and out from a nest in a corner of the roof.

Batchelor's noodles taste good wherever you eat them. On the left is my tent, hung up to dry.

I shared the bunkroom with a mother and her four children, all hiking the path in the same direction as me, and three chaps about my age from London, who were hiking in the opposite direction. They had planned to bivy-bag the whole route, sleeping under the stars, and had reckoned that mid-July offered their best chance for dry weather. Unfortunately, the last week had seen the worst weather of the year; on their first night they had almost drowned in their bags, and they had quickly decided that youth hostels and bunk barns were the way to go. Also hiking west-east were a father and his eleven-year-old daughter.

This doll house was in the farm's laundry room. The weirdly crooked chimney bothered me.

Wall hikers turn out to be a very varied bunch. I met retired couples, pairs or groups of friends, old and young, male and female, entire families, and solitary hikers like me. The majority are middle-aged or slightly older, and they typically carry only a day pack, arranging for their luggage to be ferried from one B&B to the next. I deliberately made the walk more of a challenge (not to mention cheaper) by tenting where possible and carrying everything with me. This included five days’ worth of food, even though it was easy enough to buy food en route.

And so ended the second day. I was looking forward to the third, which would bring the most remote and dramatic section of the Wall.

Hadrian's Wall Path - Day 2, part 1

I was woken by the dawn light, a yellowish-green glow through the fabric of my tent. It had rained heavily overnight, but the morning brought clear skies. I shared the campsite, a small field behind a farmhouse, with a couple of other hikers and a pair of cyclists. One of the hikers I would see every day except my last: he was in his 40s, wiry and fit-looking, with a distinctive khaki neck-flap hat and a GPS mounted on his shoulder like a miniature space cannon. Like a Japanese version of Predator, except he wasn’t Japanese. Or an alien.


It stayed bright into the afternoon. The walk was pleasant, following the line of the military road which was built in the eighteenth century along the course of the Wall. This section was actually built on top of the Wall, using the Wall and its associated forts as the main building material – an act of egregious vandalism that shocked antiquarians at the time and led to bitter complaints in Parliament.


For now, though, the sight of the massive ditch defences were enough to excite me, both the ditch to the immediate north of the Wall line, and the much larger ‘vallum’ ditch to the south. Archaeologists debate the precise purpose of this southern vallum ditch, which follows the course of the Wall closely, varying in distance from 50 to several hundred yards, depending on terrain. It clearly serves to demarcate some kind of military zone, but one wonders how it worked in practice.


I passed a few day trippers, but this part of the route was pleasantly quiet. The sense of isolation didn’t help when I crossed a stile to be confronted by a faceless scarecrow.


A little later I crossed another stile to find a small purple dragon staring up at me. A few yards farther on some kind of hippo was perched on a fence, and it was followed by an array of Scooby Doos.


By this point I was hardly even surprised when I saw a SNES shell embedded in a garden wall. At first I thought it was a novelty letterbox, but no, it was filled with cement.


Hurrying on, I passed by the Robin Hood Inn – because if you decided to establish a pub right next to the most important Roman monument in Britain, in fact built out of stone from said Roman monument, and decided to give it a relevant historical theme, you would name it after that most famous Roman of all, Robin Hood.


Around lunchtime I saw this crude but friendly bucket lid inviting me to stop at St Oswald’s tea shop. This place was actually already a planned stop, mostly because of the name. St Oswald was a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon king who converted to Christianity and won a famous victory on this very spot, and to celebrate he founded a tea shop.


It was a beautiful spot. I threw down my backpack and hammered my fist on one of the tables on the patio, and demanded a cream tea, which duly arrived. Eating the scones was a challenge as the tea shop was crawling with pests in the form of an assortment of cats and kittens, who stalked my food with admirable persistance. The kittens were quite easy to flick away, but the mother cat, clearly a grizzled veteran at such things, had the clever strategy of hopping onto my leg and trying to reach my tray while digging her claws into my trousers to prevent removal.


Next to the tea shop was the battle site of Heavenfield itself. A lonely church stands in the middle of the field, surrounded by a circular wall. Inside the church was a little exhibition about St Oswald.


My favourite part was a children’s colouring book, the novelty of which was that it was not only meant to be coloured in by children, but had also been drawn by a child (to be precise, Caitlin, aged 3).


I teach Anglo-Saxon history, but I don’t remember the part in the life of St Oswald where he rode around on a psychedelic llama.


Or where he rowed a boat carrying a queen whose body comprised nothing but a massive head.


Or the part where three soldiers knelt in front of him while he clutched his crotch in a worrying fashion.

I left the church and moved on. My punishment for making fun of a three-year-old was a growing darkness in the sky; brooding storm clouds loomed ever closer from the west, as you can see in this photo, and soon I would pay the price for my wickedness...