Author’s note: I abandoned the San Juan Islander series about my 2023 hike on the Hadrian’s Wall path midway through to write about local history, public lands and a more immediate 2024 return to the path. That one included a tramp through bogs and drenching rain with an old friend. I now return to 2023, when the hike nearly ended before it started after I sprained my ankle in downtown Newcastle. This was a huge disappointment, as my purpose was to see what I had missed when in 2019 my friend Jerry McElyea and I hiked the entire path, save for the eight-mile Sewingshields section. But using public transportation from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, I managed to see most of what I had missed…save for the Sewingshields stretch. That would come in 2024…just barely. If you missed the preceding post, you could FIND IT HERE.
July 10, 2023, Gilsland, Northumbria
As usual, there were plenty of sheep on the Hadrian’s Wall path that day, including a big brown that at first, I took for a bull. I thought, “Uh oh, no warning sign. I cannot run and all I have to defend myself is a trekking pole.” I expected to meet cattle in earnest as I moved farther west and rocky barrens gave onto farmland. Then another hiker I met on the trail reported that he ran for his life from an aggressive bull in a field five miles ahead, forcing him into a three-mile detour.
The day began with a full breakfast that I shared with three energetic couples in the breakfast room of the Vallum Lodge, just outside the village of Once Brewed on the B6318. They were Americans, who I judged to be in their early 50s, traveling together on the wall path for the first time. When my breakfast arrived, the owner Samantha’s mercenary cocker spaniel, Branston, assumed station next to my chair.
Branston, the house dog at the Vallum Lodge, awaits my bacon.
“Awwww, he must know you,” one of the American women said.
“I met him four years ago,” I replied. “He wants my bacon.”
This drew laughter and opened the door to conversation. I learned that they were old friends from different cities working for the same company. They had done a lot of hiking together and, as with the family I met at Hallbarns two nights before, were wisely taking a break from the wall path to enjoy a relaxing day at Vindolanda followed by a trip to Hexham. I suggested that if they were visiting Hexham, they might consider going on to Corbridge and the Roman town, only minutes away by bus. I did not recommend the Angel Inn for lunch.
It was clear that I had done the wall path before, which further piqued their curiosity. Namely, why ever would I return here, when there were so many other places in the world to hike? A fair question. I then launched into my tale of woe about the ankle and losing Sewingshields and urged them not to miss the milestone, adding unsolicited background on its origins and detailed directions on how to find it. I knew I had overdone it by the protracted silence that followed. Exchanging pained expressions, they were convinced by then that I was a total nutball—especially the men in the group. They pushed away from the table in unison and fled to their rooms. This is what happens when a history nerd spends too much time alone.
Suddenly, I had the breakfast nook to myself, except for Branston, who was chewing furiously on a quarter-sausage knowing Samantha might arrive any minute and snatch it away. When she reappeared from the kitchen, we were both finished, at which time she asked if I wanted her to pack a lunch. Four years before, it was a tuna-mayonnaise sandwich (tuna straight from the can, thick with mayo) which haunted me late into the evening. I begged off; my sights were set on the cafeteria of the Roman Army Museum, which I hoped to reach somewhere around the noon hour.
To do that I would need a ride, owing to the puffiness and varying shades of purple that had yet to fade on my ankle. Samantha said she would be pleased to give me a lift to Cawfields Crags, only a few miles west on the B6318, but I would have to wait as she had already consented to piling the three couples into her Mercedes for a ride into Vindolanda. With that I returned to my room and waited for the strong coffee to finish its work—a necessity when you are over 70 and expect to be on the trail for more than a couple of hours.
Finally, I separated daypack essentials from my roller bag and wheeled it down the hall to its assigned placed in the foyer, ready for pick-up. The three couples were waiting on the front steps for Samantha to bring the car around. The morning was sunny and warm, as attested by their shorts and polo shirts and no-show socks. I on the other hand—in confirmation of my nerdiness—wore cargo shorts with a zillion pockets, a safari shirt with roll-up sleeves and a bucket hat. My daypack found a place on the edge of the stoop, while I sat on the top step. When Samantha pulled up, they rushed to board, save for one of the women, who, as she was climbing into the front seat, stopped, looked over the roof in my direction, and said, sweetly:
“Have a nice day…and watch that ankle!”
Before I could reply, she ducked into the car and Samantha sped off. Twenty minutes passed before she returned, during which I reviewed my photos from the day before and checked my email for late posts from the far side of the world. I also saw, for the first time in two hikes, a baggage hauler as he zipped up the drive in a white mini van emblazoned with “Hadrian’s Haul” and a cartoon of a happy Roman legionary pulling a roller bag. With engine idling, he ran up the stairs, into the house and reappeared a moment later with my roller bag in hand, snapped open the rear cargo doors, tossed it atop a pile, and would have peeled off had I not hollered, “Hey!”
“Yeah, mate, what is it?” he said, turning, hands on hips.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a single trekking pole on board, would you?” This was the high-end titanium model on loan from my sister-in-law that I left behind three days before at the Iron Sign BNB.
“Naw, nuthin’ like that, today.”
I wondered aloud why hauling a pole that weighed a few ounces three stops over 20 miles was so complicated. A synapse must have engaged, jogging his memory because, without pausing a beat, he held up a forefinger, ducked into the cab, and produced the pole, still extended full-length with a baggage tag affixed.
“It sat at Hallbarns all night,” he said, grinning sheepishly. “Tracey figured you’d be at Gilsland by now, so I was nowt expectin’ to drop it here.”
“I’ll be at Gilsland, all right,” I said, gratefully accepting the pole. “God willing and the creek don’t rise.”
“You Yanks! I’ve heard that one before.” He looked up. “Don’t worry, it won’t rain until teatime and you’ll get where you’re goin’ by then.”
I collapsed the pole while walking him back to his van. Guessing what I was about, he opened the cargo door and allowed me to stuff the now-exorbitantly expensive contrivance into my suitcase. With that, he slammed the door, slipped behind the wheel, and leaned over to the passenger side window.
“You do know your case and pole would have got there anyways,” he said.
“Yes, but they’re happy to be together again.”
We laughed once more, and with that he backed up, threw it in drive, and turned west on the B6318. All in the space of five minutes.
No sooner had Hadrian’s Haul left than Samantha reappeared, motioning me to get in the car. Neither of us said a word on the five-minute dash up the road. No doubt, she was focused on chores that needed doing before her next set of guests arrived. This was a huge favor, considering the £25 charge and pant load of consternation from Iron Sign BNB owner Owen two days before. Instead of talking, I wistfully looked beyond Samantha’s profile, following the ridge and the wall past Winshield Crags, the halfway mark and highest point on the path.
Milecastle 42 on Hadrian’s Wall captured from halfway up the hillock to the west.
We crested a hill, and, on the descent, I spotted the venerable Milecastle Inn and the bus-stop I had used in 2019. I had doubled back then from Carlisle via train and bus for a photo of the Cawfields milecastle from the perspective of a hill sliced cleanly from the summit to the inundated quarry below. The hill’s pyramidal surface includes a stabilized section of Roman wall that marches up from the fortlet and seems to vanish in midair. Samantha turned right at the intersection and a mile down the road dropped me in the carpark and picnic area of the Northumberland National Park, which serves as a convenient gateway to Hadrian’s Wall for motorists and day visitors.
Cawfields Quarry and the hillock where Hadrian’s Wall ascends to nowhere is a tranquil setting for day visitors to the wall and picnikers.
This was the first of three major charismatic stops for the day, the others being Great Chesters fort and Walltown crags. Although I had been to Cawfields twice before, I strapped on my pack, skirted the pond, and ventured through the gap for another look at the milecastle from the top of the hill.
It was then that I realized that the full restoration of my belongings was short lived. I had left my stay-cold water bottle on the front steps of the Vallum Lodge. No way would I even remotely consider pestering Samantha. In 2019, I left behind my charging devices and expensive clothing. Now, I was facing a morning on the trail without water. While indulging in self-criticism—a running commentary laced with invective—I tried to ascend the steps flanking the wall remnant leading to the summit, but the pressure on my ankle was too much and I surrendered a third of the way up. There would be no upgraded image with my new iPhone. I picked my way down in disgust and made my way back through the Hole Gap kissing gate, past the pond and then decided to stop and turn for one more shot of the hill and the path to nowhere.
While walking back to the bus stop at the Milecastle Inn, the mid-morning light revealed the Roman vallum (ditch network) south of Milecastle 42 and Hadrian’s Wall.
This is when I first met David Harris, a retired aerospace engineer from Los Angeles, who had followed me through the gap. He is about my age, a head shorter and stouter, in jeans, polo shirt and misshapen cowboy hat. While exchanging pleasantries, he saw that I was favoring my right ankle, whereupon I had to explain how I did it.
“And you expect to finish the hike?” he said, amazed and skeptical all at once.
“Slowly,” I replied, “…with a bus ride here and there.”
“Well, you couldn’t be any slower than me,” he concluded with a shrug. With that he made a beeline for the park’s flush toilet and sink, which I did not need this time around as I had barely worked up a sweat.
I left the quarry behind and set out for the highlight of the day: my return to Aesica, “Fort of the Gods,” also known as Great Chesters. I had done my homework this time before leaving home and felt fully prepared to enjoy the site. I was wrong, of course, but more on that later. As earlier reported, Great Chesters’ ruins remain as they have been for 2,000 years but for sections that have provided stone for churches and fortified farmhouses, such as the one on Cockmount Hill, just west of the fort.
Cawfields Quarry as it appeared in its heyday until it was shut down in 1944, thus preserving what remained of Hadrian’s Wall in the area.
Still, enthusiasts as far back as the 16th century reported that Aesica’s ruins were remarkable. As the antiquarian and clergyman John Horsely (1685-1732), wrote in Britannia Romana or The Roman Antiquities of Britain, published posthumously in 1732:
“The fort at Great Chesters must be reckoned among the number of those that have been well preserved. The ramparts about it are in the third or fourth degree. Some part of the original stone wall is standing at a good height.”
He goes on to describe the ditches encompassing the site and the west ramparts that were “very high” with “several regular courses of stone…” where the ruins “were cleared out” [exposed]. He also was able to trace the outlines of the commanding officer’s quarters (praetorium) and other structures occupying the fort’s interior, including what he interpreted as a sanatorium, or bathhouse.
This Roman era altar at Great Chesters southeast gate may be a paean to Bacchus (note the wine pitcher). Scholars believe it was moved to the site in the 1920s.
None of this was visible to weary, untrained eyes when we passed through in 2019, largely because the interior structures are under turf. We had no idea so much was left in place, save for the west gatehouse that we hurried through. We were intent on making Gilsland and our BNB before it rained. This time I walked the perimeter (among the sheep), as Horsely did, following his notations to the southeast gate, where an altar sets in the guard room. This has excited writers and passers-by over the years, although there is one school of thought that the object was hauled to the site in the 1920s from another location, which may be the object Horsely described in the same report:
“I was told of a cross, standing in a meadow south of this fort; but when I came to it, I saw it to be a Roman stone, and the remains of a large altar.” He does not mention the raised relief of a wine pitcher on one side of it, which could be a paean to Bacchus. Whatever it means, hikers have left coins on it over the years.
The most intact structure in the fort is the strong room of the headquarters building, its vaulted portal spanning a remarkably complete underground chamber.
The most intact structure in the fort is the strong room of the headquarters building, its vaulted portal spanning a remarkably complete underground chamber, the flagstone floor still visible where not overgrown with turf. While Horsely does not mention the strong room, another 18th century hiker, John Skinner (1772-1839), does, making note of it in an 1801 paper while throwing kudos to the farmer in the process:
“(At Great Chesters) an underground archway, about four feet [1.21 m] wide and four high and as many in depth,” he reported. “When discovered by the farmer who occupies the ground, it was filled with burnt wood and ashes; but he had the curiosity to empty it ‘til he came to a pavement at the bottom formed of flat stones.”
Another antiquarian, Dr. John Lingard (1771-1851), following an 1800 inspection of the site (among many others), wrote that the floor of the strong room “…was flagged, and on raising one of its stones a spring gushed out, which converted the vault Into a well, which ever since has served the farm house with fine water.” It could not have been a bountiful catchment system, as a dearth of water compelled the Romans to build a six-mile aqueduct from the source of Haltwhistle Burn.
The current farmer had strung chicken wire around the strong room perimeter, not so much to protect the ruin as to prevent his flock from taking a tumble while grazing. However, like Owen’s pen at the Iron Sign BNB it is not sheep-proof. Two of them had broken in and were calmly munching away on the sacred turf.
After an hour or more I was satisfied that I had truly experienced the fort. The question now was should I carry on toward Cockmont Hill and three more miles of the “Nine Nicks of Thirwall,” that corrugated series of glacial spillways running from Cawfields Quarry to Gilsland? Or turn around, make for the Milecastle Inn and the next westbound AD122 bus. I leaned against one of two massive stone gate posts, pulled up my pant leg, and rolled down my sock and compression sleeve. The prognosis was not good. I opted for the bus.
(That evening while reviewing the source material I had uploaded into my iPad, I discovered that the gateposts may be a Roman milestone split in half by its “tasteless owner,” according to a 19th century surveyor.
I knew then that I would visit Aesica again.)
Walltown Revisited and Catapults
I struggled over the two ladder stiles, recrossed Haltwistle Burn—feeling guilty once more over my retrograde—and made my way up the road to the Milecastle Inn and my bus-stop. I went inside, bought a bottle of water from the landlord (who asked hopefully if I wanted lunch), and returned outdoors to perch on a worn picnic table. No sooner had I doffed my pack and twisted the bottle cap than the 122AD bus pulled up. I shouted, grabbed my things, and hobbled as quickly as I could to the folding door, pack and pole in one hand, my water, sans cap, sloshing in the other. The driver waited patiently while I dug into my pocket for a couple of £1 coins.
I fell heavily into the first seat available a couple of rows back without meeting the eyes of any of the dozen passengers on board, most surprisingly elderly with shopping bags attached to small, wheeled carts, inbound from the Tesco supermarket in Hexham. In less than five minutes I stepped off at the entrance to the Roman Army Museum. Not a head turned as the bus sped off for the park at Walltown, a few hundred yards up the road.
The modern museum, run by the Vindolanda Trust, occupies part of the site of a pre-Hadrian frontier bastion that stood sentinel at the crossroads of the Stanegate Road and Maiden Way, the latter running north-south from Scotland to the town of Kirkby, northwest of Liverpool. For at least 200 years, Magnae (now Carnovan) was home to the Hamian archers (Cohors I Hamiorum Sagittaria) from the city of Hama in the Orantes River Valley of northern Syria, one of only two cohorts (regiments) of archers in Roman Britain. Archaeologists from the Vindolanda Trust (owner of the site and museum) had recently begun work unearthing the far end of the ramparts.
After paying my admission, the desk attendant directed me to a closet where I would store my daypack and trekking pole while in the building. But before eating I decided to visit the red-tinted galleries that provide a three-dimensional primer on the legions during their 300-year occupation of Britain. Here, mannequins stand sentinel in legionary livery (both regulars in segmented armor and auxiliaries in chain mail), along with a spectacular Hamian archer, bow drawn on horseback. Having outfitted US soldier and Royal Marine mannequins for the national park, I knew these models had come with a heavy price tag. There was no way the park could afford such quality, so I resorted to buying low-cost department store mannequins, more suited to Ralph Lauren beachwear ensembles—a decision that draws scoffs from visitors to this day. While studying the warriors you cannot help but overhear a hologram of an actor in a grotto across the room portraying a Roman legionary recruiter, who, in his best Godfather II-era Robert DeNiro, extolls service on the northern frontier. 
There is also a gallery with two full-scale replicas of bolt-shooting catapults, a scorpio minor and manuballista, nasty looking devices that could pin an enemy to a wall with barbed arrows from 300 to 1,300 feet away—or so said an artificer in chain mail offering detailed commentary on screen. This would be their builder, “master catapult engineer,” Tom Feeley, who assembled the machines for the museum to original specifications. One dates to Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great) in 350 BCE, and the other to the first century CE, around the time the legions permanently occupied Britain. You can read more about these machines in detail (as I did once I got home) on the museum’s web site, which includes a photo of Feeley eviscerating a watermelon, standing in for an enemy soldier. I gave it a pass at the time, as by then I was hungry enough to eat a watermelon instead of using it for target practice.
Most of all, I thoroughly enjoyed the film narrated by the actor Brian Cox. It depicted the life of a young legionary assigned guard duty on the wall. Accompanied throughout by splendid aerial shots of the wall’s central sector, the film portrays the adventure promised by the hologram recruiter two galleries before, though in a cliff-hanger ending, a gang of fierce natives ambushes the legionary.
Following a sandwich and bottle of sparkling water in the cafeteria and a scan of the bookshelves (where I bought Mike Richards’ excellent guide to the wall), I knew it was time to leave. As memory served, the trail to Gilsland was three miles away and theoretically an hour and twenty minutes on foot. With a surplus of bravado (or idiocy as the case may be), I reclaimed my pack and set off up a country lane (with no name) for the trailhead that I knew was just past the Walltown Visitor Centre carpark.
The ankle had calmed down, so I could not resist the call to the bluffs and the wall above. On passing the center driveway, I stopped, retraced my steps, and headed for the hills. My new plan was to hike as far as Turret 45A at the far end of the rollercoaster section of the wall overlooking Quarry Lake, which, as at Cawfields, filled with water when rock mining ceased in 1976. Rather than pass through the old quarry, I made a beeline along the shady path leading to the now-familiar stile bordering the site. So little had changed I felt as if I had been there only weeks before. Doubling-checking my trekking pole to ensure it would not collapse, I swung over the stile and advanced uphill toward the reconstituted wall. It was already a massive sight as it plunged downhill and, by turns, disappeared beyond the crest.
The ruins at Walltown is one of the most dramatic sections on the wall path.
I trod carefully around the rocks, which led me to the knoll (where Jerry and I contended with jealous cows) and a splendid view of the wall as it snaked along the bluff’s contours, peaking at the turret ruin above the plain that rolled north to Scotland. To the east the rock face hung like a proscenium curtain enfolding greensward dotted with grazing sheep before turning a corner and marching off to more frozen combers of rock on the far horizon. Using my pole as a brake on the downslope and a boost on the upgrade, I made my way to the turret and turned to capture the wall heading west from the same perspective as 2019, only this time there were no cows feeding and resting on the knoll. Satisfied with my work and noting the lowering skies, I reversed direction just in time to meet two tattooed idiots in baggy pants and tank tops (one of them with gold incisors) gleefully tramping uphill atop the wall. This contravention of rules made plain at every trailhead irritated me no end, but what could I do, a retired park ranger from across the sea, leaning heavily on a trekking pole?
On the way out of the carpark I stopped in the visitor center, and following an animated conversation with a delightful young woman staffing the counter, bought a new water bottle (labeled “Northumbria National Park”) exactly like the one I left behind at the BNB that morning. Stuffing it into the mesh side pocket on my daypack, I said my good-byes and headed out the door. But there were no event-free exits on this trip. In swinging my pack about my shoulders (while diddling with the trekking pole), I launched the new bottle back through the doorway, where it landed with a ring on the concrete floor, suffering a dent in the lid that it bears to this day.
“Don’t forget your water bottle!” the attendant called cheerily.
Reddened and frustrated, I retrieved the bottle, re-stuffed it into the side pocket, and secured it this time with the nylon strap provided, tight enough to induce metal fatigue. I thanked her and said goodbye once more, secure in the knowledge that I would be the source of another lame-hiker anecdote during the evening’s table talk.
Limping out to the road, I had another decision to make. My excursion up and back from Walltown had added a mile of stress to my ankle and I still had another three to lay down before I reached Gilsland. Should I return to the Roman Army Museum and either call a cab, or catch the AD122 to Haltwhistle, take the bus or train to Carlisle and double back?
Or press on and hope for the best?
I adjusted my compression sleeve, tightened my bootlaces, took a deep breath, and made for the trailhead.