It was by far the fattest great tit I’d ever seen. But in truth, it is the only one I’ve ever seen. Lest you misunderstand, I’m talking about what the British call a “garden bird.” And this little guy possessed a record girth thanks to his benefactor in the electric green vest of a Northumberland National Park caretaker.
A Great Tit, considerably slimmer than the one he encountered along Hadrian’s Wall. (Wikipedia Commons)
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The fourth day of my second Hadrian’s Wall hike began, just as it did in 2019, at the AD122 bus stop outside the gate of Chesters Roman Fort in the Northumbrian haven of Chollerford. As you may recall from an earlier post, the ankle I’d blown out in Newcastle before I set one foot on the trail necessitated public transportation of this sort. Instead of hiking the eight-mile jag to Housesteads Fort— one of the foremost reasons for returning to the path—I was tied to a set of wheels.
Not that the AD122 was that bad.
If you visit the “Go NorthEast Line” website you learn that the AD122 (for the year some archaeologists believe the wall was begun) runs between the Hexham and Haltwhistle train stations with stops along the B6318 highway, mostly below the spectacular 12-mile central section of Hadrian’s Wall. You may also push a button on the handrail nearest your seat to request an intermediate stop, among them the Sewing Shields Crags trailhead a couple of miles down the road. But the last thing I needed was to forge into the hinterlands, blow out my ankle once again and end up leaning heavily on my walking stick until after midnight or being rescued by a ranger on a Quadra cycle.
I stepped onto the bus and immediately noticed that of the three passengers on board at 9 a.m., I was by far the youngest. Dropping my pack by the driver’s cockpit, I bid him “Good Morning” and expertly (or so I thought) asked for a day pass. He scowled.
“We dunna sell that ticka nerdtoof hare.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“We dunna sell that ticka hare.”
“That’s what I thought you said. How much, then?”
A withering stupid-tourist-pregnant-pause ensued, followed by a curt:
“Two pound.”
I dropped two coins into the slot provided, the machine spit out a ticket (good for the day) and I was on my way. I took a seat on the starboard side, all the while under inspection by my fellow passengers, one a woman with a grocery cart, the other a man in a knee-length raincoat and a head of silver hair that had been coiffed by an eggbeater. From my window seat, I could see hikers already making headway toward their next BNB on the trail, which traces the wall course past the scattered ruins adjacent to Route B6318, before bending north and then westbound, for another five miles above the bluffs to Housesteads. They’d wolfed their wall path-standard Northumberland breakfasts (eggs, bacon, potatoes, a tomato slice and a cup of baked beans) and hit the trail with fully intact intact lower extremities. Tracey, the owner of the Hallbarns BNB, where I’d spent the night, offered the same this morning, but I begged off, opting instead for oatmeal and toast. I also declined her bountiful sack lunch, figuring I was never going to burn off all that grub sitting on my can.
The wall-top trail at Housesteads.
The baby boomers were using trekking poles, and they were good at it, pulling forward with alacrity, the titanium legs glinting in the low morning sun. Let’s face it. Health benefits aside, it is an odd-looking exercise, and a long way from the shepherd’s crook employed by William Hutton, the 78-year-old who walked the entire path and back in 1801 without Patagonia rain gear and quick-dry underpants.
The B6318 turns slightly past Limestone corner, where Roman soldiers gave up excavating a ditch of solid dolorite (also known as “Whin Stone”), then bisects moorlands turned golden in July, giving onto the roadside attractions of the largely submerged Carrawburgh Fort (ancient name Brocolitia, meaning “rocky spot,” not truck garden). About a mile past the fort and the remains of a Mithraeum (a temple to the god Mithris), the wall course and trail shift away from the highway to about 200 meters north, where the Romans took advantage of the natural battlements of Sewing Shields Crags…where I should have been later in the morning.
By road, the trip to Housesteads was over in a mere 10 minutes along eight miles of right-a-way. I toyed briefly with the idea of jumping off at Carrawburgh, where there is a bus stop and car park, but no toilets. I had to pee again thanks to three cups of Tracey’s coffee and the undulating roadstead, which was barely moderated by my hard-plastic bus seat.
The car park was devoid of early birds as we pulled in at 9 a.m. In fact, the only bird I connected with was the great tit, a fat little nubbin perched on a chair back in the modest outdoor dining area of what I presumed was the fort visitor center. Immediately upon disembarking, though, I’d made a ridiculous Olympic walker-style dash across the parking area for the toilets, praying they wouldn’t be locked. You will note that I said “toilets” instead of “restroom.” Ask for a restroom anywhere in Britain, save for urban centers familiar with this distinctly American euphemism, and you’ll be met by puzzlement. Ask for the lavatory or “crapper” and you’ll be better served, although it must be stated here that the latter word does not apply to the 19th century English plumbing contractor who made numerous water closet improvements, including perfection of a float valve that Westerners have been frantically jiggling ever since. While it is true that the “Crapper” company name may be found on the porcelain lip of many a vintage commode, this decidedly English word for defecation—a blend of three languages, all meaning waste of some order— only appeared the Oxford dictionary in 1846 when Thomas was a wee sprig.
A profound coincidence, then? It’s amazing what you can learn on the internet. Stick with “…where are the toilets” … when you have to go, and you’ll never be let down.
So…the great tit? Spotting the empty tables and chairs and apprehending that I might not find another empty seat that morning, I made a beeline for the dining area, doffed my pack and gratefully sank into the tubular-framed chair a table away from the park caretaker. I guessed he was in his fifties, round about the middle with an insulated cup in one hand and the remains of a breakfast bar in the other, the crumbs of which he was sharing with the bird.
I’m hardly an ornithologist. I was only able to recall and identify the bird on the internet that night because the white flashes over black plumage on either side of his head reminded me of our Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) back home. The tit’s black coloring descends in a narrow band down its breast between bright yellow flanks, which are topped by gray-teal wings with a diagonal white band. This particular specimen was so rotund that he could have been mistaken for a plush toy with a squeaker.
“This little fellow meets me here every morning clamming for his bait (begging for food),” the caretaker said with a chuckle. He tossed another crumb on the table and the bird, without fear, fluttered down and snapped it up. “You could give him a nibble if you like.”
I reached into the side pocket of my day pack and produced a peanut butter and oatmeal bar that had been smashed to crumbs. The second I opened the foil packet, the tit sensed that another treat was forth coming and hopped to the pavement, taking station between my legs.
“See what I mean?” the caretaker said. “He knows where his scran is comin from.”
I dropped a few more crumbs from the loose contents of the packet. The bird swept them up and then bobbed his head expectantly for more. He didn’t move an inch. The odd thing about it was that there wasn’t another bird in sight. Back home, say, in the ferry line there’d be fifty or more just like him and several other species besides contending for the crumbs at first whiff,
“I know what your thinkin’,” the caretaker said. “Where are his mates? There’s nowt around, least ways near the building. But the little chunker is not afeared. He’d eat till he burst if you keep on.”
We chatted amiably while I waited for the visitor center doors to open. I learned that the caretaker lived in Hexham and maintained the Northumberland National Park sites along the B6318 corridor. He asked where I was from. He was unaware of the San Juan Islands, of course, but knew all about the Pike Place Market in Seattle, you betcha. That’s where they throw the fish. He sat up in his chair. Yes indeed, he’d seen it on TV. Most people I’ve encountered around the world know about the market and the Chinook salmon they toss between the cold cases like brickbats. The Space Needle and Mount Rainier run a distant second or third, if at all, and never mind where I live. “We got a salmon—Oooooooooh, salmoon, salmoon!” It’s on his bucket list.
By now cars were pulling into the parking area, the occupants shouldering daypacks, leashing their dogs and making for the breezeway between the toilets and visitor center. None were queuing at the door as we’d done four years before. And I knew for a fact that the toilets contained only so many stalls.
“I have to ask: Where are all those people going? Don’t they have to wait until the center opens?”
“Why no, mate,” he replied. “This is the National Trust Visitor Centre and Café. The English Heritage visitor center and museum are up the hill! You buy a ticket there if you divvin a pass…er, uh, I thought you were waiting for a coffee?”
I rose from my chair, shuffled to the door, cupped my hands and peered through the glass. There was a visitor center counter, more tables and chairs and a buffet, which staff were readying for the day. It was a heckuva lot different than what I remembered from 2019. We’d bought our tickets inside and exited through a back door via a series of exhibits about life along the Roman frontier. That was the only way you could approach the fort from the car park. It was no accident that I’d missed the replica of a Roman bench toilet (a two-seater) once set against the wall of the modern toilets, just outside. I hadn’t bothered to look. (It was now up the hill.) I had not read ahead the night before because the Wifi didn’t work upstairs at the Hallbarns BNB. But why blame it on Tracey? I was in full-on stupid tourist mode, a behavioral phenomenon I was well aware of after 21 years of supervising the operation of two National Park Service visitor centers, one of which had toilets (er…restrooms) not six steps from the door. That’s right. They’d burst through the door and demand to know where we’d hidden the toilets.
“This is too dumb to believe, isn’t it,” I said to the caretaker as I shouldered my pack and turned to leave.
“Don’t forget your shepherd’s crook there!”
He meant my brand-new Mountain Warehouse trekking pole I’d purchased in Hexham two days before to replace the one I left hanging on a hook by the door at the Iron Sign Inn. That was the bed and breakfast between Heddon and Harlow Hill run by a “good cop/bad cop” couple—the trekking pole that cost £15 (on sale), plus another £20 for the taxi from Corbridge to Hexham and return.
“Ah…that’s not the worst thing tourists do…you’re all right,” he said.
His friend, the tit, had reclaimed his place on the chair back and bobbed his little orca head, a mercenary gesture to draw another Nature Valley crumb. I turned and followed several recent car park arrivals heading directly for the breezeway, as if they knew where they were going. It was then, and only then, that I became aware of what sounded like the sustained roar of a partisan soccer crowd (or a royal motorcade) in the vicinity of the fort. I turned and risked one more stupid question:
“Is there some kind of event going on up there this morning?”
He threw his head back and guffawed so violently I thought he was choking to death.
“You might say that,” he said, recovering himself. “But you will have to go see for yourself!”
“You’re all right,” I said, which drew another guffaw and a wave off.
“Watch that leg!”
A few steps up the gravel path revealed the source of the noise. Swarms of sheep were being torn from grazing, napping or whatever it is they do during morning hours and guided by Quadra cycles in orderly lines into another pasture to the west about two hundred yards away. It was a far cry from the few sleepy individuals we’d passed on the very same trail in 2019.
The object of the exercise, as I was to learn later, was to guide them into shearing pens. One Youtube video shot in Northumbrian terrain in 2020 exclaims that more than 1,000 were accumulated and sheared in that particular outing. There were at least as many this time around.
I stopped halfway up the hill to capture the tremolo on video. I was not alone. Never mind the fort. In what has become a ritual the world over, others were doing the same thing—absorbing the entire experience through the lens of a cell phone. You see it everywhere nowadays and it doesn’t matter where you are or how obnoxious the situation. Blessedly, there wasn’t a selfie stick in sight. It wasn’t about us. Farmers were making a living alongside a World Heritage site, which happened to be an ancient fort spilling over the hillside from the Roman wall.
There are 256 working sheep and cattle farms in Northumberland National Park alone, averaging just over 1,000 hectares in the lowlands and 293 in the hills on either side of the wall path, most of the latter worked by the tenants of four estates—three private and one owned by the Ministry of Defence. Protests aside, that the sheep seemed to be entering the shearing pens (out of my line of sight) in an orderly manner reflected the “hefted flock” practice, which is particular to Northumbria. Tenants come and go, but the sheep remain, which instills a familiarity with the home ground—generationally passed from lamb to ewe— and precludes the need for fencing beyond the fieldstone and Roman walls. The sheep know where the best grass grows and where to shelter during “extreme” weather. Replacing a hefted flock involves intensive supervision and there simply aren’t enough shepherds in England to go around anymore, according to the website.
The woolly crowd, marching in orderly fashion to the shearers below Housesteads Fort.
The hefted flock also must have something do with why sheep don’t panic and run from hikers unless they encounter the same morons who hang out near the car parks and cut down legacy trees in the middle of the night. On the whole, the symbiosis of national and regional trails and farmland has worked well for all concerned throughout England.
As planned, I hiked uphill past the English Heritage visitor center (still closed) and took the path that leads to the fort’s south gate, which also was barred and locked. But I did find a bench where I could catch my breath, adjust the compression sleeve on my ankle and tighten my boot laces. The boots that I purchased in Newcastle were just OK, thus far, as I still gasped when removing them. The leather uppers would take a while to break in and my ankle felt like it was encased in a steel pipe.
The landscape below the fort was terraced in ancient times to accommodate the camp-follower village (vicus) that eventually dwarfed the fort— the same as any gateway community today surrounding military installations in the United States and around the world. An auxiliary legionary could buy anything he wanted (and could afford) in the vicus: alcoholic beverages, weapons, fancy foods, women and tattoos. He could marry surreptitiously (it wasn’t allowed) and have a hut full of kids, some of whom would grow up to enlist in the Tungrian cohort, a Germanic unit recruited in today’s Belgium. They occupied the fort for more than three centuries roughly from its founding. It requires a leap of imagination and perhaps an illustrated exhibit wayside to appreciate what once was here. Nowadays, the grasses that cover the submerged ruins are held in check by the sheep that were still wailing on their way to the shearing chutes.
It was time to move on. From the fringes of the Mediterranean to the Anatolian plains, one Roman fort was pretty much like another in design, and I was too antsy to wait for the site to open. Besides I’d been there before. I retraced my steps and skirted the west side of the fort to the wall path, which runs along the north side of the Roman wall, east to Sewing Shields and west to Crag Lough and Steel Rigg. To reach the trail involved another painful climb over a ladder stile. But my plan was to take take selfies of the wall panorama in both directions from the fort. I particularly wanted to take a selfie as I’d done in 2019, the wall over my shoulder, plunging diagonally below the fort’s northeast corner, then climbing to thread the green-grass escarpments that look like waves about to break onto the plateau below.
I gimped along, careful and slow on the grassy slope, leaning so hard on my trekking pole that I buried the worn rubber tip in the soil. I took only a few images, all of which were a testament to pain rather than Roman engineering. I quickly turned west again—just like the tourists I used to see in the park; the ones who jumped out of their cars, engine running, snapped a photo of the park sign, then bolted back to their cars and sped away. Feeling ridiculous, I struggled over the stile once more, and in a quest for redemption, as it were, I decided to walk atop the wall through a windbreak of conifers called Housesteads Wood.
The only portion of the Hadrian’s Wall trail where you’re invited to walk atop the wall, heading west. Jerry McElyea photo
Taking the bark-surfaced path immediately below would have been easier. But this is the only section on the path where walking on the wall itself is allowed, and as memory served, I had ambled the 100 yards or so four years before without a care. However, I’d forgotten about the tread, which has the consistency of peanut brittle. This is one of the sections restored in the 19th century by the antiquary John Clayton. The turf his work crews laid over the rubble between the curtain walls has been worn away by millions of footsteps. I pieced my way over and around the protruding stones, foot-by-foot, while Sunday day hikers closed on me from behind or jetted past on the trail below. When I reached the wooden barrier and inset stile on the fieldstone wall at the end of the path, I was further dismayed by a sudden autonomic reticence to swing a leg over the barrier and step down.
The end of the line of the wall-top walk. An identical set of steps are embedded in the opposite of the fieldstone wall at left.
“Do you need a hand?” asked a teenage boy, waiting for a friend on the opposite side of the stile.
I nodded and handed him my trekking pole. Then, holding onto the barrier for dear life while looking down a couple a hundred feet over Housesteads Crags, I swung over, while his friend guided me down the stile steps on the opposite side. Before I could reclaim my pole, the boy’s friend leaped over the stile like a mountain goat, and they bounded off without looking back. Helping out an old guy with a bum leg is just something they do, evidently.
I now had a decision to make. After snapping a picture of the wall zig-zagging over the glacial spillways to the far horizon as planned, would I turn around and retrace my steps to meet my bus? After all, there was no way I could hike the remaining three miles to Once Brewed, struggling up and down the flagstone steps abutting the wall. But before turning back, I first wanted to see Mile Castle 37 and the only remains of a gateway arch on the wall path.
Milecastle 37 is about a hundred yards or so beyond the wall-top trail. It features the remains of the only Roman arch along the 84-mile wall path. The interior ruins date to the late medieval period when the mile castle was used for cattle pens, and possible a “shiel” or shepherd’s hut.
Why not? It was only a few hundred yards ahead.
Then I could turn back.
Looking east on the trail beyond Mile Castle 37. A “Do I or don’t I?” moment. The author gave it a crack, hang the sore ankle.
Looking east toward Sewing Shields Crags, the portion of the Hadrian’s Wall trail the author has yet hike in two visits.
Note: Missing Limestone Corner and the view sheds of Sewing Shields and beyond that day has remained a bitter disappointment, especially after reading accounts by others of the stretch while scribbling this chapter. I’ve done my best over the months to rationalize my injury and place a positive spin on the trip overall. And, let’s face it, I never would have been able to hike 8.3 miles on the highway-side and those rugged uplands. There’s only one thing for it:
I will return to hike Sewing Shields in September.
—MV, July 5, 2024