The first third

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I will start by trying to clarify a few points about the length of Hadrian's Wall, the length of the Hadrian's Wall Walk, and the length you actually need to do to walk it (which are not quite the same!).

When the Romans first built the wall (starting in AD 122 and completed by AD 128) it was 80 miles long. However, these were 'Roman miles' which were a bit shorter than our modern miles. A Roman mile is considered to be 1617 yards whereas a modern mile is 1760 yards so a Roman mile is about 0.92 of a modern mile (or 1.48 kilometres). This means that the actual length of the wall is 73 modern miles. The official Hadrian's Wall Long Distance Footpath is however 84 modern miles, 11 miles longer than the actual wall. There are two main reasons for these extra 11 miles.

Firstly the footpath route does not follow the wall route through most of Newcastle upon Tyne; this is because hardly any of the wall now exists as the modern city has been built over it and it would be difficult to follow its true route, even though that is largely known. Instead the footpath starts at the wall's start (in Wallsend) and then follows the north bank of the River Tyne before turning north to join the true wall route at Heddon-on-the-Wall. Every (Roman) mile the Romans constructed a 'milecastle' and in between each milecastle they constructed two equally-spaced turrets. If you think of the start of the wall as being milecastle 0, then Heddon-on-the-Wall is close to where milecastle 12 would have been (i.e. about 11 modern miles) , but you have actually walked more like 14 modern miles. A similar thing happens in the city of Carlisle where the footpath follows the south bank of the River Eden, again adding a few extra miles. Secondly, even when you are walking along the route of the wall, the official footpath diverges occasionally sometimes because there is no public right of way or for 'health and safety' reasons - if the wall route is now the route of a modern tarmac road and there is no pedestrian footpath alongside the road, then the route diverges so that you don't have to walk along the road.

Even if you follow the official footpath exactly, you will still almost certainly walk more than 84 miles. This is because overnight accommodation is often not directly on the footpath route so you will need to walk off the route at the end of each day and retrace your steps back to the route the next morning. To help you plan how long you will need to take over the walk, it is best to assume that you will be walking about 90 miles. How long you take over that is completely up to you; I took 6 days and I have to say that most the people I talked to whilst walking the path were aiming for 6 days. However I also met people who spread the walk over many months, coming up to do a few miles one day and then not doing the next bit for a number of weeks afterwards. You could also choose to run the route as many people do. You can also cycle the route, though the cycle route does diverge from the walking route in a number of places due to access restrictions, and hence you would not see some of the best stretches of wall.

Overnight accommodation is likely to be mainly bed and breakfast establishments, though there are a couple of hotels and a number of camping barns/bunk houses, as well as many campsites. If you are looking for B&B type accommodation in the most popular periods you will probably want to arrange it in advance. The most popular time of year appears to be Easter rather than summer. There are a couple of companies that will carry a bag for you between each overnight stoop so that you only need to carry a day pack yourself. Although I didn't do that myself I met a number of people who were doing that - it works out about £5 per day per bag. There is also no rule about which direction to do the walk. The prevailing wind direction in the north of England is westerly so many walkers will choose to walk west to east so that they will (hopefully) have the wind (and the rain!) at their backs. However most guide books are written as east to west, and the milecastles are numbered east to west. I chose to walk east to west and booked all my accommodation in advance. I have to say that I was very happy with all the places I stayed and I would recommend them all. I was looking for a reasonably-budget type price and the most I paid for a B&B was £35, and the cheapest was a youth hostel for £15 though that price does not include food.

Sunday 28th July 2013

I booked a National Express coach from Birmingham to Newcastle on the Sunday in order to spend Monday to Saturday doing the walk. For once the coach arrived early (well, only 5 minutes) but anyway that was an auspicious start. I had booked a space in a 4-bed room at the Euro Hostel in the centre of Newcastle. The guy at reception when I arrived to check in at about 6pm said that there was nobody else booked in to that room yet so I would probably have it to myself. In fact someone else did turn up at about 10pm but that was no problem. The room was comfortable and clean and the (cold) buffet breakfast (as much as you wanted) was included in the price of £19.

Monday 29th July

I reckoned that I could manage 15 miles per day quite easily so I did not feel the need to start really early and most days I started between 9 and 10 am. The first day, however, I need to get to Wallsend, a suburb of Newcastle about 6 miles to the east. Newcastle has a metro network but as they don't accept senior citizens travel passes, I opted to take the bus which did. Buses no 12 and 40 stop at the metro station at Wallsend and the start of the walk is just 5 minutes round the corner from there. At Wallsend the Romans had a large fort called Segedunum. Most of what is visible there is reconstructions so I decided not to go in to visit it. The start of the walk is not immediately obvious and I had to go the the fort museum desk to ask where it was! The main entrance to the fort and car park is on Buddle Street (the A187) but there is another side entrance on Station Road (the A186) and the start of the walk is just over the road where a small brown sign points to "Hadrian's Way". A short path takes you on to a foot and cycle path which follows a dismantled railway line over the railway bridge in front of you. This path actually starts much further east but this is where Hadrian's Wall actually started.

It was 10:10 as I started the walk, following this path all the way into Newcastle city centre, and although you are initially a few hundred yards north of the river, after a couple of miles the path meets the river and you then follow the north bank of the River Tyne for the next 12 miles or so. This takes you right through the centre of Newcastle past all 7 city centre bridges over the river (why do they need so many?) and then through the districts of Elswick (the former site of Armstrong's armaments factory) and Scotswood - both famous names if you are familiar with the song "Blaydon Races"

Ah me lads, ye shud only seen us gannin',
We pass'd the foaks upon the road just as they wor stannin';
Thor wes lots o' lads an' lasses there, all wi' smiling faces,
Gawn alang the Scotswood Road, to see the Blaydon Races.

We flew past Airmstrang's factory, and up to the "Robin Adair",
Just gannin' doon te the railway bridge, the 'bus wheel flew off there.
The lasses lost their crinolines off, an' the veils that hide their faces,
An' aw got two black eyes an' a broken nose in gan te Blaydon Races.



Although it was interesting to see the centre of Newcastle from this perspective, unfortunately it meant that the whole time you were walking along tarmac paths or concrete slabs. Opposite the suburb of Blaydon you cross the main A1 road and walk through the suburbs of Lemington and Newburn. At last however the route turns north away from the river and up a short steep hill (it has also been very flat until now) to the village of Heddon-on-the-Wall. The route takes you through the village in order to get your first sighting of a short stretch of the actual wall just to the east of the village. My accommodation for this evening was Houghton North Farm which is just west of the village on the Hexham Road (B6528) and where I arrived at 4pm. Houghton North Farm has 6 rooms all with bunk beds in different configurations of sizes. I had booked a space in a 4-bed room but again I was the only person booked into that room this evening so I had it to myself. As the afternoon/evening progressed, more small groups of wall-walkers started to arrive. In particular there was a group of 3 friends from London/Exeter and a Dutch guy on his own all of whom I was due to see many times over the next few days as we were all intending to do the walk in 6 days and we were often booked into the same accommodation. Evening meal was a choice of the two pubs in the centre of the village. I had the carvery meal in the Swan which was excellent value at around £6.

Tuesday 30th July

I had asked for breakfast at 7:30 am but as I sat chatting to other walkers it was not until 09:25 that I set of on the second day's walk. Breakfast was not quite a 'full English' but Paula who runs the B&B business will do your eggs anyway you like. Again this was excellent accommodation, Paula is very friendly and had some useful tips about the route, and when to ignore some unnecessarily long divergences.

The route now follows the route of the wall, but also the route of the B6318, known as the 'Military Road'. Occasionally you walk on the grass verge of the road mostly you are walking on a footpath a few yards away from the road. Although the map marks the positions of the sites of a number of milecastles, there is nothing left of them to see except for a mound under which they lie. However you do start to see quite clearly the remains of the 'Vallum'. The vallum was a deep ditch which runs parallel to the actual wall on its south side, anything up to a hundred yards away. The spoil from digging the vallum was used to build a mound on either side of it, and additionally there was a further less-deep ditch just on the north side of the wall. Whilst walking this stretch of the route you can easily make out the remains of this series of ditches and mounds even though there is no visible wall. I also passed a another couple of walkers here, a father and son, who I stopped to chat to for a while, and we discovered that we had both booked in at the same B&B (Greencarts Farm) this evening; they were happy sitting looking at the view for a while so I carried on. Today was due to be my longest, about 18 miles, but on the whole was fairly flat with the occasional undulation. At about 1:30pm I stopped for lunch at St. Oswald's tearooms and shortly after leaving there I came to the first true stretch of actual wall, just to the west of a farm called Planetrees.

Shortly after Planetrees it is necessary to leave the route of the wall in order to cross the North Tyne river at Chollerford. The Romans had built a bridge to take the wall across the river but that had long since gone and the modern road bridge is about half a mile further upstream. Immediately after the river crossing, however, is one of the best preserved Roman forts along Hadrian's Wall, now known as Chesters but originally called Cilurnum by the Romans. I had visited Chesters a few years earlier on the way back from a holiday in Scotland, and since today was likely to be my longest day of the walk, I just wanted to carry on and reach the B&B for the evening; there would also be other forts further along that I hadn't seen before. The walking conditions underfoot had been much better today, mostly on grass, but now there was a long stretch along the B6318, and also uphill. The reward for getting to the top of this hill was another stretch of wall, but this time including the remains of a turret, the first one we had seen. This was just opposite a farm called Blackcarts and so is known as Blackcarts Turret. A milecastle was designed to accommodate anything up to 80 soldiers but a turret was primarily a lookout tower and was designed just for a few soldiers at a time. The turrets and milecastles are numbered starting from the east end of the wall, so after, for example, milecastle 25, you would come across turret 25A , then turret 25B, and next milecastle 26. Blackcarts Turret is Turret is 29A.

A couple of hundred yards behind Blackcarts Farm lies Greencarts Farm, a popular stop for wall-walkers as it offers a range of different accommodation. You can camp there, park your caravan there, there is a basic outbuilding bunkhouse dormitory, a more up-market pair of smaller B&B dormitories with a shared kitchen and bathroom, and finally 'proper' ensuite B&B accommodation in the main farmhouse. Again I had booked a space in a 4-bed B&B dormitory, but again no-one else was booked into the same room so I had it to myself; the father and son I had met earlier in the day had the other room of the pair. This farm was much further from the nearest pub than last night, but there was a menu for a take-away curry house a few miles away who delivered to the farm so we enjoyed an excellent curry. The Dutch guy I met last night was staying in the bunkhouse and the three friends who I also met last night were staying in the main farmhouse.

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Photos

Milecastle
What a milecastle might have looked like

Segedunum Roman Fort
Probably not the original Roman building though!

The start of the walk
The finish will be more exciting, honest!

River Tyne
You soon meet the river which you follow for most of the day

The Bridges of Northumberland County
4 of the many bridges in Newcastle city centre

Houghton North Farm
B&B in Heddon-on-the-Wall

Wall construction
a cross-section of the wall showing the vallum

The Vallum
The remains of the vallum running parallel to the B6318 near Whittle Dene reservoirs

First wall sighting
A short stretch of the original wall near Planetrees

Chollerford
Crossing the river North Tyne near Chesters Roman Fort

A Turret
The first remains of a turret at Blackcarts farm

Greencarts Farm
B&B near Chollerford