The semi-restored wall, its topside garlanded with foxglove, Dyer’s greenweed and purple honesty among dry coarse grasses, zigzagged west over hill and dale (“crag” and “nick”) from the lip of Housesteads Crags to the Steel Rigg carpark, unseen on the far horizon. Thunderheads were stacking up above the Scottish Highlands to the north, while scattered cumulous overlaid leaden skies south and west, their undersides incandescent in the low morning sun. But they were miles off. In my immediate future, the ridge top and the fells below were sunny and warm. I decided to go as far as Milecastle 37, poke around for awhile, see how it went…and then decide.

Looking east toward Mile Castle 39. The foundations within the enclosure were once huts that housed sheep and shepherds in medieval times. They may also be remnants of Roman barracks.

I picked my way along the path for about a quarter mile when I arrived at the squared rubble mass of the milecastle. It is the second of six identifiable quadrangular fortified gatehouses (also called “fortlets”) along the wall path, if you are hiking east to west, and one of only four that are fully enclosed. The foundations of medieval cattle pens and shepherds’ huts (known locally as byres and shiels, respectively) hug the east and west walls. But the fortlet’s most notable feature is the archway fragment on the south side of the north gate, the only such archway among the structures along 84 miles of wall path.

The Archway

This archway has fascinated me since 2019. How had three voussoirs on each side of the arch survived for so long, balanced precariously across the millennia? This, after modifications by medieval shepherds, incursions by border ruffians, 100-year snowstorms and incomprehensible acts by hooligans such as the ones who chopped down a venerable sycamore on the path (which I will address in a minute). For the answer, I went with Casey Stengel: ‘You could look it up.” And so, I did.

The north archway on Mile Castle 37 has raised an abundance of speculation over the years. It was alternately opened and bricked in during the Roman period. However the two voussoirs (sections) on either side of the ruin were added in the 20th century, as shown by a c. 1922 watercolor.

The load-bearing arch has been around going back to ancient Mesopotamia, and was employed in varying forms by the Greeks and Etruscans. But it was the Romans who mastered the technique, which resulted in the bridges, aqueducts and buildings that proliferated across the empire, including most of the fortifications on Hadrian’s Wall. The load is born through compression, which enabled gateways such as the one under Milecastle 37’s stone tower. The voussoirs (stone wedges) that form the arch were set in place on a wooden frame that supported the voussoirs until the keystone was inserted at top center. To compensate for thrust, the tendency for the arch to flatten and collapse, the activity was anchored by an adjoining wall or buttress. The load could not be borne until the keystone was inserted, nor would the arch sustain itself if any other voussoir was removed.

As mentioned earlier, antiquarians have been hiking and describing Hadrian’s Wall since the 16th century. But it was not until 1853, with the first of four significant archaeological surveys, that scholars came closer to divining how it all worked.

As with many of the installations along the wall’s rugged central section, the fort’s north gate (where a slab with a pivot hole still exists) gives onto a precipice that plunges to the rocks below. The legionaries must have loved that because it meant that they would not have to dig a ditch and pound sharpened branches (cippi) into the hardpan. This leaves one to wonder why there was a gate at all on the north side, though some archaeologists postulate that the entrance, initially 10 feet wide, was “built, blocked and partially demolished,” then opened again either to facilitate maintenance on the wall’s north face, or to access a goat path. It also may be because the gates were demolished when the wall was abandoned during the reign of Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius (138-161 CE), and then the entire network reestablished under Marcus Aurelius (161-180). No one really knows.

The big “Aha!” about the archway for me came via illustrations by James Irwin Coates and Jessie Mothersole. Coates (b. 1848) was a Yorkshire schoolteacher and artist who visited the wall nine times from 1877 to 1896, capturing on paper ruins still in evidence and those freshly excavated. His 160 sepia-washed watercolors show the full range of structures along the path, including the north gate of Milecastle 37 in a drawing entitled “Milecastle W. of Borcovicus [or interchangeably Vercovicium, better known today as Housesteads], 1879.” Mothersole (1873-1958) was an archaeologist and writer who was a regular on the wall path as it then existed. She published a delightful book in 1922 that includes color and grayscale plates that mirror Coates’ work, including her “North Gate at Housesteads Milecastle.”

Done more than 40 years apart, both paintings reveal only the bottom voussoirs, called springers, in place. According to Mike Bishop’s “Per Lineam Valli” website, the subsequent four voussoirs (two on each side) were “…replaced in recent times for effect.” Did subsequent archaeologists identify the wedges among previously subsumed scatter, and the site managers decided to offer more than a hint of an intact arch?  Undoubtedly, there are purists who would condemn the act, but sometimes we need a little more than an exhibit wayside to fire the imagination. Had the 10th-century antiquarian John Clayton not undertaken the unscientific reconstruction of more than 20 miles of Hadrian’s Wall, forts and milecastles…think what would have been long lost.

The Military Road

Having absorbed what I could from the milecastle, my reckoning with the trail once again interposed as my boots clomped forward. I was bound for Cuddy’s Crag, the name a diminutive of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (634-687) who was celebrated in his day for his love of birds, healing the sick and, most especially, turning water into wine. The eminence is one of the best points to view the wall’s passage east and west over the Whin Sill. To reach it required descending via flagstones into a nick, then ascending a foot at a time to the plateau, the wall top bristling with bunch grass and the flora described above.

Once atop I paused for breath, drank in the view and reflected on what I had learned about Roman engineering from historians such as Adrian Goldsworthy, archaeologists Mothersole and Nick Hodgson and enthusiasts such as Mike Bishop, James Irwin Coates and most especially James Collingwood Bruce. A contemporary of Coates and Clayton, Bruce was a clergyman who also taught school, and in 1853 parlayed his travels along the path into the first authoritative guide to the wall, utilizing a numbering system of the milecastles still in use today.

I was specifically interested in re-visiting the term “zigzag,” which has been employed by all those above and assorted writers by the hundreds in describing the wall course in the hilly central sector from 1599 to the present. For example, here is Bruce’s observation:

“This mode of proceeding…is compelled to accommodate itself to the depressions of the mountainous region over which it passes. Without flinching, it sinks into the ‘gap,’ or pass, which ever and anon occurs, and, having crossed the narrow valley, ascends unfalteringly the steep acclivity on the other side. The antiquary [such as John Clayton, no doubt], in following it into these ravines, is often compelled to step with the utmost caution, and in clambering up the opposite ascent, he is as frequently constrained to pause for breath.”

Amen, brother.

In Bishop’s view, the zigzag is a “re-entrant,” a planned fortification technique (and term) that accommodates defense in uneven terrain. As he writes: “Instead of going straight across the gap, the wall was recessed to the south slightly. This had the advantage of making it both easier to build (the slopes were less precipitous) and defensively stronger (any attacker was vulnerable on the front and both flanks, rather than just the front).”

Voila! I could see it now from both directions as the wall serpentined into infinity.

 

The view from Cuddy’s Crag looking east toward Housesteads woodland. The author doubled back and took the easier Military Road trail below the ridge.

But I was finished with re-entrants for the day, or so I thought. Now I was more focused on the social trail that led to the Military Road below. I turned from the uplands and the Roman wall to the roadway created under the rule of Marcus Aurelius—a route equally venerated among historians. As it was designed for ease of passage for legion commanders needing to move men and material from Wallsend to the Solway Firth, so it is for hikers wishing to avoid those flagstone steps hanging in midair along the crags. I embraced Bruce’s take:

“For the accommodation of the soldiery, the road went from castle to castle, and so, from station to station. In doing this, it did not always keep close to the Wall but took the easiest path between the required points…to bring the traveller from mile-castle to mile-castle by the easiest possible gradients.”

Following the above passage, Bruce warmed to Roman ease, his pride as a Briton revealed in this anecdote:

“The Romans are said to have been remarkably lazy, so much so, that in the hot weather of summer, having almost nothing to do, they lay basking in the sun, on the south side of the Wall, in a state of torpor. The Scots were in the habit of watching their opportunity, and, throwing hooks, with lines attached to them, over the Wall, caught the poor Romans by their clothes or flesh, and by this means, dragging them to the other side, made them prisoners.”

My grandmother, Marcella, would have loved that, being a proud Irvine despite her very Roman name, which was bestowed by my great-grandfather, Marcellus. He had counted on his firstborn being a boy and refused to be thwarted by gender.

While the Military Road trail follows the Roman track, there is nothing left of the original right of way, once finished with stone or crushed rock, and crowned for drainage. I made time, nevertheless, all the while checking the wall course above the slope and the heads of the occasional hiker that popped into view. My friend Jerry and I had taken a part of the road in 2019 after our descent into Sycamore Gap, hoping to speed our way to the shelter of Once Brewed before a thunderstorm hit. It made a difference then (as now) as it must have for the Romans.

Still, I had to be mindful of my physical limitations and not stray from the task at hand. I found that if my boots pointed forward, I was fine. But the minute I turned, for whatever reason, the pain would shoot up my leg, forcing a halt until the throbbing diminished.

 

Crag Loch and Hotbank Farm with the fort at Vindolanda off in the distance. The author took a rest break here, which alarmed a fellow hiker who offered assistance.

 

Round about Hotbank Crags, the Military Road merges with the wall path and unveils one of the most dramatic views on the trail: the toothy majesty of Highfield Crags standing sentinel above Crag Lough (pronounced “luff’), the lake shimmering below. The lough was formed by glacial melt following the last Ice Age about 11,000 years ago and is one of the four along the wall path. The other three are Broomlee, Greenlee and Halleypike. The wall bends south here and makes a long descent to Milking Gap where the venerable compound of Hotbanks Farm occupies the saddle between the two plateaus. Presumably, this is where a lot of milking was done on the current farm, and an even more ancient site, pre-wall, about 50 yards south. The trail bends around the farm and crosses the marshy lowlands via flagstones, skirting the partially subsumed Milecastle 38. The diversion was cut only after more than 800 Dutch bankers, on a “team-building jolly” (as Bishop describes it) in 2003, trampled the earthworks into the mud.

The trail down the rock face of Peel Crags demands undivided attention from hikers in the best of shape. It spurs naked fear in those with sprained ankles.

While making my ever-so-slow descent down the crag I met a burly, florid man in his fifties in a tank top that set off muscular arms full of ink. A thatch of bleached hair bristled from under the flat crown of a faded ball cap canted in a devil-may-care angle. This was Boris from Birmingham on a walk from Gilsland to Chollerford. His plan was to hike sections of the path on weekends until he could ring up all 84 miles. He sported a greasy little daypack that may have been from a trade show or a door prize at a village fete. I had taken a break about halfway down, gratefully employing the wall as a backrest.

“Are ye all right mate?” he asked. I presumed that I was old enough to be his father, and he was sweet. “Do ye need a hand goin’ down, as I’ve got all day, you know.”

“No thank you, I’m OK, just taking it slow.” I explained the ankle, to which he commiserated a bit. His dad had done the same thing 20 years before.

“How’s he doing now? Still hiking, is he?”

“Oh, no, he’s jedded now.”

“Jedded?”

“That’s Brummy speak,” he said with a laugh.

He paused a few beats and regarded me with mock gravity.

“He’s dead, mate.”

With that I was on my way.

Sycamore Gap

Rather than ascend Highfield Crags above the lough, which Jerry and I had done in 2019, I continued southwest on the Military Road, rounding the escarpment crowned by a woodland on the summit (very much like Mount Finlayson on San Juan Island), and then bypassed a steep flight of flagstones, dubbed Mons Frabricius after a German scholar. Another iconic view shed materialized; this one known as “Sycamore Gap” in recent years for the lone tree that stood like an exclamation mark at dead center of the glacial spillway.

Here’s how Mothersole described it:

“At Steel Rigg Gap [as it was known then] the ground falls very steeply, and the Wall-stones are set horizontally. Here in the gap is a small walled enclosure, with a sycamore growing in it. No! it is not a Wall turret, only a sheepfold.”

Jessie and I number among the millions the world over who enjoyed this tree, either in person, in books and magazines or on the silver screen. I had looked forward to seeing it with Jerry in 2019. We had been aware of the tree and the fragment of Hadrian’s Wall from the popular 1980s film, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” as it is referenced in guidebooks and hundreds of travel brochures. As noted in the account of my first hike, the film, starring Kevin Costner in the title role, places the wall seemingly a few miles north of Dover. Robin and his sidekick Hazeem (Morgan Freeman) trudge up from the beach to rescue Much (the Miller’s Son), treed like a raccoon by the evil Guy of Gisborne (Michael Wincott). This is also when Hazeem looks about Northumbria from the wall and declares: “Is there no sun in this cursed country?”

A final look (for the author) of the celebrated tree in Sycamore. It was cut down by vandals two months later.

I suspect the English got a big bang out of that one. Aside from the typical outsiders bleating over the weather, Sycamore Gap is about 400 miles from Dover and 190 miles from Nottingham. My friend, Mike Upton, the former British Consul in Seattle, was amused by Costner’s posh accent, which the actor mercifully abandoned after the first scene or two.

But back to the trail. I tried in vain that day, along with others below the gap, to capture a photo of the solitary tree undisturbed. However, as I wrote in 2019, “…a horde of tattooed ‘barbarians’ from the car park were gathered about the tree and draped over the wall in various aspects, loudly quaffing from bottles in paper bags, smoking cigarettes and texting.” It was the same this time around. It was a Sunday, and day walkers picnicked under the tree’s canopy, using the wall as a backrest and taking pleasure in the afternoon and their surroundings. A perfect shot, sans people, was impossible. Who could object? Especially now.

The tree is gone, chain-sawed to its base in September 2023, allegedly by a pair of miscreants from the Carlisle area. The case is still in the law courts as I write this. The question remains: Why? As of this writing, the suspects, a couple of men in their thirties from Carlisle, are not saying. But the folks in Northumbria have reacted so vehemently to the act that the accused showed up in court wearing ski masks.

There is hope, however. Shoots are spring up around the stump, very much as the ancient bigleaf maple we had to cut down next to the barracks at English Camp on San Juan Island several years ago. Additionally, a sapling planted years before in the gap is showing promise. But it will be a hundred years to a fully restored crown. I am sorry for those who will never see it.

Castle Nick

Just as I did in 2019, I diverted from the Military Road and bushwhacked up the narrow gap called “Castle Nick,” the site of the oft-photographed Milecastle 39. The Romans again took note of the topography here, for despite the mile between gaps, they must have figured another fortified gate was needed to prevent incursions. As a result, contrary to other milecastles, 39 is more rectangular than square and, at 50 by 62 feet long with those distinctive rounded corners employed to emulate the walls of the turf forts, nearly fills the spillway.

I labored up the hillside, grass seeds poking through my socks, and entered the milecastle via the pole stile erected dead center of the south gate. Inside, built into the east and west walls, are garden ruins that may or may not have served as barracks for the legionaries manning watchtowers (turrets) along the sector. As with Milecastle 37, they may also have been restored or reconstructed for use as shiels or byres by shepherds who migrated to the highlands for the sweet grass from April through September.

Roman ruins remained useful long after the legions departed in the early 5th century, especially in the capricious weather of the high country. In 1922, Mothersole sought shelter herself among the farm folk during one of her wall walks, referring to them as “out-by” people. Like medieval shepherds, they were still moving their flocks in May, which meant they had little to share when it came to food and lodging. Mothersole usually wormed her way in by professing that her needs were simple: eggs, bread, butter and a bedroll out of the weather. But sometimes the farm folks expected labor in return, such as the occasion she had to cut peat for the cooking fires, an exercise that strained her sense of adventure.

“It looks so easy to cut one of these slices of ‘chocolate mould,’ but it isn’t!” she writes. Fortunately, I would not have to cut peat for my bed and board, as I had a room reserved at the Vallum Lodge, which is just down the B6318 from the Twice Brewed Inn and Pub. But first I had to negotiate the steep ascent to Peel Crags from the mile castle, which would eventually take me to the Steel Rigg car park and then down the entrance road to the highway. I was well on my way when I experienced my first tourist “crush” in Hadrian’s Wall country.

Sunday Walkers

Climbing up from Castle Nick was scary enough, as streams of walkers squeezed by as I was trying my best to clear the path, and without so much as a “how-do-you-do?” But that was nothing compared to my descent a mile on, straight down the 45-degree cut into the solid rock of the basaltic bookend of Peel Crags. No handrails. No wiggle room. Just a narrow track employing the rock faces as flagstones, worn smooth over the centuries, plunging to the gap below.

I took a deep breath and was halfway along on my descent, trying to focus on the steppingstones rather than the 200-foot drop. That is when I looked up and saw a clutch of walkers starting up the rock face where there was clearly no room to pass. “Can you wait a minute!?” I pleaded, by now cursing myself for abandoning the Military Road at Mile Castle 39. Had I not done that, I would be enjoying a beverage in The Sill visitor center rather than clinging to the side of an escarpment with at least a dozen people with no plan on how to climb past me, not to mention a trail runner closing from behind emanating petulant sighs.

Thankfully, everyone within earshot stopped and backed down, though they obviously were not happy about it. Taking advantage, I moved as quickly as I could, catching my breath when my injured foot canted the wrong way. Finally reaching the bottom, I thanked the eastbound throng as the trail runner sped by. Meanwhile, a couple who had stopped for a rest break beside a section of wall that crossed the gap, smiled empathetically as I approached.

“Sunday walkers, mate,” the man said.

The Milestone

It took me about 30 minutes to cross the gap, pass through a kissing gate and walk down the car park entrance road to the B6318 on the valley floor. The Sill visitor center anchors the intersection and is next door to the Twice Brewed Inn, which has been in business under one landlord or another since the 17th century. Jesse Mothersole sought room, board and a cup of tea there in 1922 and was turned away, whereupon she once again pled that all she needed were eggs, bread, and butter. Today the Inn has a pub, restaurant, top-floor guest rooms and a campground in the back next to a beer garden that hops until the wee hours.

But I was in no mood for a beer. I had two hours to kill before Samantha at the Vallum Lodge was ready to receive guests, so I decided to catch a bus to Vindolanda, a Roman fort site that pre-dates Hadrian’s Wall and is one of the most celebrated archaeological sites in Great Britain.

Jerry and I had spent several hours at Vindolanda in ’19, but after I arrived home, I learned that we had missed one of its most astounding artifacts: a Roman milestone on a faded and overgrown section of the Stanegate Road that once linked the forts on the northern frontier before the construction of Hadrian’s Wall. What makes the milestone so special is that it is in situ; that is, it has remained exactly where the Romans planted it 2,000 years ago, and it is the only one of its kind in the country.

After hitching my second ride of the day on the AD122 bus, I asked about the milestone while paying my admission in the visitor center. At this, the receptionist came around the counter, took me aside and gave explicit directions. (“Not many ask about that one specifically.”) But I was so wrung out by then, all I could gather was that it was behind the museum on a creek downhill from the site. I passed through the entry portal and was struck once again by Vindolanda’s elegance, the ruins surrounded by manicured lawns, the reconstructed fort gate and section of wall, all laid out beneath the verdant foothills of the Pennines. It is a massive site. They have not excavated the half of it, and the work is still going on thanks to the dedication of the Birely family who for decades have directed extensive archaeology on the site. In large part, this is due to the commitment of the board of trustees whose members include such luminaries as the British actor, Robson Green, a Northumberland native (a true “Geordi”).

Having already spent ample time exploring the ruins, I walked down the path to the shady creek bed. On its banks is Chesterholm, which houses not only the museum but also a café and gift shop. The place was rocking with Sunday visitors, and the galleries and cafe tables were jammed. I had planned lunch there, but not just yet. I looked around for the milestone, venturing down to the creek and back, but it turned out I was searching on the wrong side of the building. The only milestone I could find was a replica, accompanied by an exhibit wayside. I went back inside and asked a young woman ringing up sales in the gift shop.

“Can you tell me where I can find the milestone, please?” She did not know, but with a smile turned and opened a door to a hidden storeroom, where a young man was stocking shelves. She explained what I was after, and he happily came to the counter and offered more specific instructions. The milestone was nearly out the back door of the shop. I would have to cross the parking area and walk down the exit road that winds to the bottom of the hill.

“You would never spot it these days if you didn’t know what you were looking for,” he said.

Sure enough, just off the road at the base of the hill was a worn wooden gate with a ladder stile overgrown with foliage. And there was the milestone, on the weedy track that was once part of an ancient road. It was battered and encrusted with lichen, its dedication and directions long dissolved. A rusted Ministry of Works sign leaning against the fence warns against tampering, but this artifact, although photographed and written up in guidebooks, stands ignored among the tall grasses away from the ruins and archaeological sites on the plateau above. I climbed the stile, ran my hands over the milestone as if it were a long-lost lover and took an obligatory number of photos with my cell phone. Feeling self conscious then, I braced for the hordes of tourists who would surely descend at any minute. But no one came.

It was just me and antiquity, and well worth the 5,000 miles I traveled to get there.