Note: Because this is a walking as well as a travel topic, I have posted this same item on my Nordic Walking blog.English prehistory is daunting. After all, it goes back to Neolithic times (from around 4,000 B.C.), Celts (800 B.C.), Romans (around 53 B.C. to 313 A.D.). Teutonic Anglo-Saxons (roughly 5th century to 7th century, by which time they had evolved into Englishmen), Vikings (beginning in 865 A.D.), Norman (beginning in 1066) and on through the reigning families: Plantagenet, Lancaster, York, Tudor, Stuart, Commonwealth & Protectorate, Restoration, Hanover, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Windsor – and in the north, the Scots. Of the cathedrals, castles and other landmarks from each era, from the Neolithic stone circles (think Stonehenge) to the Millennium Wheel (erected along the Thames for the Bicentennial), the one that most captivates walkers is Hadrian’s Wall.
The wall, begun in 122 A.D. under the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, was built to secure the northernmost reaches of the empire from the Scots. It runs 73 east-west miles parallel to the A69 highway between Carlisle and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Much of the wall was dismantled, the stones used by later peoples for other building purposes, but some remains – in various states of decay or restoration. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with public footpaths following much of it, including sections atop the wall itself in several places.
From the center of Carlisle, a border town (a small city, really) in northwestern England, we boarded the bus cleverly number AD122 (see above), also called the Hadrian’s Wall Country Bus that makes several multi-stop runs a day between Carlisle and Hexham plus a couple all the way to Newcastle. The Carlisle-Hexham route, in its entirety, takes more than two hours. You can pay per segment, or buy a £7.50 Day Rover ticket that permits travelers to get on and off at will. The first bus leaves Carlisle at 7:35 a.m. and the last returns 8:01 p.m., which leaves plenty of time for sightseeing and walking. A volunteer interpreter rides a couple of the morning buses to tell Hadrian’s story and point out later historic sites in villages en route.
The bus route passes through countryside that is so improbably green and pastoral that it takes imagination to envision it tromped by legionnaires and Scottish insurgents, sometimes running red with combatants’ blood. Stops are at historic sites (including five Roman ones) and in villages with such archetypically England names as Crosby, Brampton, Birdoswald, Gilsland and Haltwhistle.
The last is especially noteworthy for walkers, because the village is in the throes of the 11th annual Haltwhistle Walking Festival. The 2008 festival began on Saturday, April 26 and lasts through Monday, May 5. It includes nearly 20 guided walks of various lengths (1 ½ to 13 miles, including an assisted one of wheelchair users) and various interests (Hadrian’s Wall, woodland bird walk, renewable energy/energy independence and more). Costs range from £3 to £7.
For independent walkers, the two recommended stretches for walking Hadrian’s Wall are from Birdoswald to Gilsland and from Housesteads Roman Fort to Once Brewed, where the National Park headquarters and a large walker/biker-friendly hostel are located.
We encountered legions of other walkers – with one pole, two or none. These included a group on the Haltwhistle Walking Festival “Behind Hadrian’s Wall in Springtime” itinerary, numerous walkers on a British Heart Association fundraiser and so enormous a group of French students that it seemed like another Norman invasion.
The path itself has lots of steep ups and steep downs where it i
s close to the wall, but there are often milder options in the in the flatter valleys below. Surfaces include erosion-controlling, user-friendly stepping-stones on some of the longer steep sections, gravel, mud and grass. At one point, we followed a sign marked “Old Roman Road” rather than the main footpath and ended up walking through a cow pasture – complete with disinterested cows.
Interestingly to us, in dry Colorado, land administrators urge hikers to walk single file on narrow trails to avoid widening them. Here where it rains a lot, where there are no marked paths, walkers are asked not to walk single file, because regrowth is easier when there has not been much traffic.
One thing we did find is that the distances on told by the guide and even on the map seem to be crow-flight measures, not taking into account the turns in the route or the extra distance added by the ascents and descents. The Housesteads-Once Brewed is always given as 2½ miles. Both of our pedometers and, more significantly, the GPS calculated it to about 4 miles. Mathematical issues notwithstanding, the day was gray, cool and threatened rain that never came. It was a magical route into history almost two millennia ago.
Another option in this region are the Northern Railroad’s guided walks through the Dales and the Eden Valley several times a month from directly from railroad stations on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line.
The wall, begun in 122 A.D. under the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, was built to secure the northernmost reaches of the empire from the Scots. It runs 73 east-west miles parallel to the A69 highway between Carlisle and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Much of the wall was dismantled, the stones used by later peoples for other building purposes, but some remains – in various states of decay or restoration. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with public footpaths following much of it, including sections atop the wall itself in several places.
From the center of Carlisle, a border town (a small city, really) in northwestern England, we boarded the bus cleverly number AD122 (see above), also called the Hadrian’s Wall Country Bus that makes several multi-stop runs a day between Carlisle and Hexham plus a couple all the way to Newcastle. The Carlisle-Hexham route, in its entirety, takes more than two hours. You can pay per segment, or buy a £7.50 Day Rover ticket that permits travelers to get on and off at will. The first bus leaves Carlisle at 7:35 a.m. and the last returns 8:01 p.m., which leaves plenty of time for sightseeing and walking. A volunteer interpreter rides a couple of the morning buses to tell Hadrian’s story and point out later historic sites in villages en route.
The bus route passes through countryside that is so improbably green and pastoral that it takes imagination to envision it tromped by legionnaires and Scottish insurgents, sometimes running red with combatants’ blood. Stops are at historic sites (including five Roman ones) and in villages with such archetypically England names as Crosby, Brampton, Birdoswald, Gilsland and Haltwhistle.
The last is especially noteworthy for walkers, because the village is in the throes of the 11th annual Haltwhistle Walking Festival. The 2008 festival began on Saturday, April 26 and lasts through Monday, May 5. It includes nearly 20 guided walks of various lengths (1 ½ to 13 miles, including an assisted one of wheelchair users) and various interests (Hadrian’s Wall, woodland bird walk, renewable energy/energy independence and more). Costs range from £3 to £7.
For independent walkers, the two recommended stretches for walking Hadrian’s Wall are from Birdoswald to Gilsland and from Housesteads Roman Fort to Once Brewed, where the National Park headquarters and a large walker/biker-friendly hostel are located.
We encountered legions of other walkers – with one pole, two or none. These included a group on the Haltwhistle Walking Festival “Behind Hadrian’s Wall in Springtime” itinerary, numerous walkers on a British Heart Association fundraiser and so enormous a group of French students that it seemed like another Norman invasion.
The path itself has lots of steep ups and steep downs where it i
s close to the wall, but there are often milder options in the in the flatter valleys below. Surfaces include erosion-controlling, user-friendly stepping-stones on some of the longer steep sections, gravel, mud and grass. At one point, we followed a sign marked “Old Roman Road” rather than the main footpath and ended up walking through a cow pasture – complete with disinterested cows.Interestingly to us, in dry Colorado, land administrators urge hikers to walk single file on narrow trails to avoid widening them. Here where it rains a lot, where there are no marked paths, walkers are asked not to walk single file, because regrowth is easier when there has not been much traffic.
One thing we did find is that the distances on told by the guide and even on the map seem to be crow-flight measures, not taking into account the turns in the route or the extra distance added by the ascents and descents. The Housesteads-Once Brewed is always given as 2½ miles. Both of our pedometers and, more significantly, the GPS calculated it to about 4 miles. Mathematical issues notwithstanding, the day was gray, cool and threatened rain that never came. It was a magical route into history almost two millennia ago.
Another option in this region are the Northern Railroad’s guided walks through the Dales and the Eden Valley several times a month from directly from railroad stations on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle line.
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