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August 8th 2016

Published: August 9th 2016

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Pips Travels

Tintern Abby.

Driving down the Wye valley in Wales and you come across this. very majestic.

So clad to be back in the north of England to enjoy a walk at Hadrians Wall. We arrived in England and had a week at Helen and Pete's outside Bath. Always great to be back there as it is such a lovely place with such nice country side. Walked some of the walks there and enjoyed a couple of drives through the beautiful country side around that area with the lovely villages. Just great to spend time with Pete, Helen and Georgie. Unfortuantly Alex is overseas so we will not catch up with her this time. We have visited some beautiful huge old manor houses with huge magic gardens. Helen arranged for us to go to one,Hazelbury Manor, where the gardener took us around and explained a few things along the way. Magic.

So, as I have said, my wish to return and walk a lot of Hadrian's Wall is one of the reasons for being in England, so as planned we headed of up north. My original plan was to walk the whole of the wall,about 84 miles, but due to time and a knee that I wasn't 100% sure of, I decided to walk the most popular

Love the Old Cottages.

Georgie, Di and I at an old cottage.

part through the centre were the wall is still visible in most areas.

Pete, Helen, Di and I drove up to the Wall, which is about a six hour drive, and settled into a small cottage just outside Haltwhistle in the country side. Very nice and peaceful with a great view out across the valley. The next day Helen and I took off to walk a section of the wall from Birdoswald to Cawlfields Quarry, about a 16k walk. Nice walk and not overly strenuous. I love the country side around here and the views in parts are really nice. Pete, who is having to do a lot of work conference calls, could only walk in the afternoon so meet us and walked backward to meet us later. The next day Helen, Pete and I walked from Cawfields Quarry to Brocolita, about 18k, which was a very interesting walk with lots of ups and downs along the top of some cliffs. Walked for quite sometime in heavy rain but this made no difference to the enjoyment apart from meaning you couldn't see the long distance vistas. The next day was spent sightseeing around the district with a few strolls

Relaxing with a Wine.

Di's happy.

around some of the villages and old Roman sites. The Hadrian's Wall area is full of old Roman sites well worth the visit. Helen and I did the walk from Bocolita to Chesters Fort, about 8 k in the afternoon along with the clouds and rain. Still very enjoyable. Our last day Pete, Helen and I went from Lanercost Priory to Birdoswold about 9k with the sun shining.So in all I only did about 50k , but it was in the area where the wall is most prominent. My knee was pretty good, and with the help of my little round pills I am pleased that I took the opportunity to do it. One of the aspects that I was worried about was that I thought that it may have been like walking a highway with lots of people, but in fact it was certainly not overcrowded, apart from around the fort areas which have road access. Those people we meet and we talked to were mainly from overseas, France, Spain, USA, and other parts of Europe while the forts had all the usual tourist type buses and folk. A nice walk that has so much history and is not