It was five years in the making.
I finally hiked the Hadrian’s Wall path from Housesteads Fort to Chollerford, ascending Sewingshields Crags and then dropping to the moors that lead to Chesters Fort on the River North Tyne. The guidebooks and Google maps say it is 8.5 miles, but my Apple watch said 12.3 by the time I threw the bolt on my hotel room door. Of course, you must consider that I had to negotiate 200 yards of corridor and six fire doors to reach my room, which is at the far end of the building. I also doubled back on the trail a few times to have another look at compelling features along the path.
Clew and King’s hills were killers on a tender ankle. I could never have done it last year.
For this I have Mark Richards to thank for his remarkably thorough guide, “Walking Hadrian’s Wall Path,” the 2023 edition. A former farmer and hiking enthusiast, he wrote his first guide on the Cotswolds in 1973 and he has not turned a spade since. Living in Cumbria has provided him regular access to the path, including a trip or two with Dr. Mike Bishop, whose “Per Lineam Valli” website I have cited in earlier postings, and it shows.
I was up early enough to catch the sunrise on the River Tyne and after breakfast I hiked the hallway to my room twice more, logging those steps, until it was time to go to the bus stop across from the hotel. Once more I would take the AD122 along the B6318, also called “General Wade’s Road” (1.) by the archaeologist and artist, Jessie Mothersole, and her forebears who logged walking the path from 1801 to the present day. But this time, I would head east…afoot. “
The morning was a crisp and clear 49 degrees, with a few scattered clouds promising added depth to vistas ranging from Northumbria to Cumbria, the foothills of the Pennines and Scotland to the north. But that would come later. I was not at the stop long before a fit elderly man (meaning about my age) appeared, ready for anything with a North Face parka, a rain cover on his daypack and sturdy hiking boots. This was Glyn Jones, OBE, a retired lieutenant colonel in the British Army, whose goal is to hike every national trail in Britain. He will soon call it a wrap, as with the completion of his Hadrian’s Wall trek, he will have finished all 17 national trails in England, amounting to more than 3,000 miles. Moreover, as he will shortly turn 80, he is drawing a bead on Scotland’s four national trails and will then take on Ireland. On this day he was heading for Once Brewed, then turning east for another night at The George. Thus far, he had covered the entire route from the Irish Sea and the next day he planned to hike east to Heddon on the Wall, take the bus to the hotel in Newcastle, then bus back to Heddon the following day for the terminal trek to Wallsend, east of Newcastle.
Once more, I explained my primary purpose for returning to Hadrian’s Wall Country a third time. It would have been gratifying to also start from Once Brewed and share the trail with an experienced long-haul hiker, but I could not risk some unforeseen calamity which might deny me Sewingshields once again. I would not be returning a fourth time.
“But you’ll probably catch up with me,” I said, explaining the ankle that I had sprained the year before in Newcastle, which is still weak.
“Likely so,” he said, not holding back. As it turned out, he did not, but I was not cocky about it. He has three years on me and hiked six more miles. But we had dinner together as promised that evening and there were a lot of laughs.
After dismounting the bus at Housesteads, I discovered the restrooms, er “toilets,” were not open for early arrivals as they had been the year before, when the then-caretaker and I took turns feeding a fat little bird in front of the National Trust visitor center and cafe. He had finished cleaning and thought, “Why not, if you gotta go, you gotta go!” Those days were over. A new and punctilious work force was in place. “Doors open at 10 a.m.,” the sign proclaimed. Two young women who disembarked with me with their golden cocker spaniel (the hunting breed, they said), approached an attendant behind the glass door and motioned toward the loos, smiling painfully.
We did not exist. She looked stonily to the horizon while slowly doing something or other. Where is a birder when you need one?
Milecastle 35 at Sewingshields has the same rounded corners of other Roman forts and milecastles. The rounded corners were meant to emulate earthen fortifications, according to some scholars.
With that, we ascended the hill to just below the fort, and parted company in quest of respective trees. I followed an ancient farm terrace around the fort and down a gap to the Knag Burn Gate, the only fortified gate outside of a fort or milecastle on the wall course. Archaeologists guess that the Romans built this one to accommodate the farmers who tilled and shipped produce from those terraced hillsides. It was also meant to be a checkpoint to guard against Caledonian raiders looking for an easier crossing than the crags that flank the gap.
This medieval burial cist on the crag was another feature that was in my must-see bucket list. Archaeologist found a male skeleton inside during excavations in 1976-77. Recycling with the resources at hand. And what better spot for a mini tomb?
Broomlee Loch looking west from Sewingshields Crag
The burn (or creek) is more of a swamp now, for which English Heritage has provided flagstones, just as Romans once built a stone causeway. Mothersole writes that the creek was worthy of the name in 1920, but the Roman solution had long broken down—as had the more recent English Heritage plan for bog abatement. Hikers today bypass the flagstones altogether and have created social trails that compound the problem because now they have a bog that is expanding exponentially. Being a former park ranger, I was not about to contribute to a social trail, so I took a couple of steps back and tried to vault the quagmire.
A mistake.
Housestead Fort taken east of Knag Burn in the reverse of views taken in 2019 and 2023.
One boot made it, the other stuck in the mud. Undaunted, I made for the the gate uphill and turned to take a reverse-order photo from those I snapped from the fort on my earlier trips. The trail next meanders through a woodland that gives onto two challenging gaps that climb Clew and King’s hills, and then on to King’s Wicket, a gap in the wall, which is supposed to have something to do with King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. This sounds suspiciously like Kevin Costner ‘s Robin Hood crawling over the wall a few miles from Dover.
Limestone Corner looking west in 1851…
Sewingshield Crags in 1851…
The antiquarian and wall chronicler, J. Collingwood Bruce, in 1853 warmed to the subject. According to a brother antiquarian of the period, Sir William Betham, local folk tales abounded about the once and future king in wall country. In one a medieval shepherd dropped his clew (a ball of twine) into the gap. When he scrambled down to retrieve it, he discovered a chamber where the king and his court were deep in an enchanted sleep. Spotting the sword Excalibur lying next to a herald’s horn on a table, high above a floor infested with “rats, toads and lizards,” he eased the sword from the scabbard and all hell broke loose. The king awoke and sat bolt upright at the disturbance and made the following pronouncement before the shepherd fled in terror:
O woe betide that evil day
On which this witless wight was born,
Who drew the sword—the garter cut,
But never blew the bugle horn.
The sword slipped into the scabbard, the king went back to sleep and the shepherd told his tale, spooking the neighborhood for all time…and adding a name to the gap.
However, both Bruce and Richards write of a more tangible form of terror associated with the wicket, also known as Busy Gap in reference to raiders from medieval times and Border Reivers centuries later. “Busy Gap Rogues” or as Bruce called them, “moss raiders,” stole through the mossy draw to commit depredations in the valley below, until the banditry ended for good during the reign of George III. Where was a Knight of the Round Table when you really needed him?
Clew and King’s hills were challenging, and being afraid of heights, I resorted to going hand over hand in places and was thankful that rocks exposed from thousands of boots provided flagstones for the ascent. But at that early hour I had the path to myself and did not have to worry about hikers behind me. That only came later when the more leisurely breakfasters, and those who had not taken the bus were starting to hit the trail.
An hour passed before I saw another soul. I had Sewingshields (1.) Crags and the top of the world mostly to myself with its 360-degree panoramas, segments of restored wall, and segments little more than berms overgrown with foliage and awaiting some future excavation. I sat down on one section and had an energy bar and a drink of water high above the B6318, from where I could clearly discern the corrugated mounds of the vallum, a secondary fortification, on the valley floor.
The first human appeared not long after I reached the summit of the crags. It was the young man, with neither backpack nor pole, who had exited the bus at the Old Repeater station, which lies about two miles east of Housesteads. From there you hike uphill to Sewingshields along a permissive access trail that crosses an ancient and still working farm—one of several such trails along the path, created through agreements struck between landowners, trust organizations and the government.
My next contact was in Sewingshields Wood, west of Milecastle 35 behind the very same farm. (2.) A friendly woman with daypack and pole and a yellow Labrador on a leash, which she had secured to her wrist…along with a poopy bag.
“The best bits are up ahead, aren’t they?” she said, then held up the poopy bag while the dog licked my hand (after I asked permission to pet him). “I know, it’s a long way to a bin, but I cannot leave it, can I?” I saw more dogs, of all shapes and sizes, on the path than ever before, all leashed and their owners mindful of their impact on others: fellow hikers, sheep, and cattle in the fields, and of course the well being of the dogs themselves. This is what makes permissive access work: The willingness to abide by rules not calculated to abridge anyone’s freedom, but to ensure that all can enjoy these special places safely and responsibly.
We conversed for a little bit while she paused in the shade, allowing her heavily panting companion to cool off. Only when I drew my forearm across my face to wipe off the “sweat” did I realize I had been hiking with a runny nose. I quickly turned away and apologized profusely, to which she replied, cheerily:
“No worries, I’m a nurse. I’ve seen it all, haven’t I?”
After she moved past. I plunged into my pack, produced a tissue, blew mightily, and cleaned up, hoping this minor difficulty was all I could expect to go wrong.
Wrong.
I transitioned to suspenders not long ago, after having worn a belt since I was six years old. They are the kind with two snaps in the front and single in the back. Before leaving home, I tested how the rear snap would interact with my daypack’s waist belt and shoulder straps. On two earlier trips to the wall path, I found that I could adjust the latter from shoulder to hip, which theoretically allows the load to transfer from back to hips. Would the waist belt be a problem? It appeared not…then.
Unfortunately, I had left it on the hip setting too long and the rear suspender clip could not cope with the pressure from the waist band. My pants began to sag in the fashion of teenage boys a couple of decades ago—Remember? The belt lashes the pants tightly below the buttocks, proclaiming loudly to all: “I am a rebel…and proud of my underpants.”—It must have happened during the hand over hand. Anyway, I could not understand why I was suddenly walking on my cuffs. I had to stop, remove the pack, my sweater and jacket and fumble with the snap behind my back, hopefully out of sight of fellow hikers and farmers, the latter who undoubtedly believe wall path hikers are harmless twits in any case.
From the woodland and farm, the path descends markedly downhill (crossing the access trail from the Old Repeater Station) onto moorlands that remind of the golden grasses that cover the rocky soils on southern exposures of the San Juan Islands. I could see miles ahead when the hillocks allowed, and at one point I spotted what at first appeared to be dancers, prancing in a zigzag pattern.
Closer inspection revealed two muscular trail runners, I would guess in their thirties, who had started their day at Wallsend and intended to arrive in Bowness on Solway that night! (I learned this at dinner that evening from Glyn, who caught them taking a breather.) They had water packs with tubes so they could sip while underway. One of them had Eurotrash blaring from his cell phone: “cocka-shun, cocka-shun, cocka-shun.” This combined with their Spandex and strap-around shades, offers another extreme recreational aspect to an undertaking that is strenuous even if you’re wearing clerical robes and using a shepherd’s crook as William Hutton did in 1801.
“You’re all right, mate,” one of them shouted, without effort I might add, as they sprinted by. I wondered if they were trying for the record of 16 hours, seven minutes recorded by Morgan Wylie in 2019. He allegedly beat the record of 16 hours, 25 minutes made in 2016 by Jacob Snochowski, which you can find, along with anything else, on the internet. There is even a photo of Jake, leaning against a fieldstone wall. He looks exhausted.
I did not think to snap a photo.
A couple of more folks looked at me funny as they moved past (though no one overtook me) …Now I know what they were saying in their BNBs tonight:
“Did you see that crazy old guy with the runny nose and a load in his pants!”
I have used the word “slogged” often in these accounts and it surely applied over the next six miles on the homestretch to Chollerford. The history of this manipulated landscape is evident as you traverse the open country that the wall bisected like a straight edge. Here, the trail parallels the B6318, or “General Wade’s Road,” *which from 1751-58 brutally consumed Hadrian’s Wall as it followed the Roman path for more than 20 miles. While the modern highway continues over hill and dale across Northumberland and Cumbria (about 60 miles worth altogether), the wall course turns northwest where the Roman’s opted for natural defensive attributes of the crags.
Away from the crags on these undulating moors, the legionaries excavated a ditch an average 25 feet wide and 10 feet deep, positioned about 20 yards in front of the wall’s north face. While farther east on the path, the ditch comes and goes; here—especially from the grove that enfolds The Grindon Milecastle 34—it is an open cut running to infinity below the highway, where sentries once scanned the seams in the landscape for skulking barbarians looking for an easier path south.
Speaking of skulking: I felt like I was doing a little of my own as I hunted for dry spots where I could doff my outer garments and refasten my suspender snaps, which continued to disrupt my pace. It was most troubling when I crossed the highway to visit the reconstituted Temple of Mithras, found next to the Brocolitia fort, also known as Carrowburgh. The temple dates to about 200 CE and remained active for about 150 years, used by legionaries and civilians alike. Originating in Asia Minor, this cult of the bull was an ideal means for a soldier to make peace with the prospect of a violent death. The temples were set up outside the forts, usually in recessed ground, small enough to be dark and intimate. Candidates would strip before entering the mithraeum. There over time they completed mental and physical challenges before judges over seven levels until they reached an approximation of the afterlife and “Father” status, something like a 32nd degree Mason.
The Temple of Mithras, a God embraced by the Roman Legions and auxiliaries, is located just outside Brocolitia Fort, also known as Carrawburgh, right off the highway. You can have a cup of tea at a snack van in the carpark. But don’t ask the proprietor directions unless you buy something.
The mithraeum at Brocolitioa, save for its stone foundations, is mostly a replica, with concrete stanchions and altars standing in from those fashioned of stone. I waited my turn for a photograph while a woman from the carpark (no pack, no trekking pole, no sturdy footwear) fiddled with her cell phone settings. I waited my turn for a photo, but by the time the two women blocking my path had left, I had lost interest. The afternoon was drawing down, hard walking on pavement was ahead and I wanted to make Chesters Fort before the café closed.
Directional signs are spare for long-haul hikers at Brocolitia, so I asked the guy who operates a coffee, tea and snacks van in the fort car park. He stared at me, long and hard and finally pointed me back the way I came. “Just past the fence and turn left on the first path you see.” When I related this to Glyn later, he said I ought to thank my lucky stars. He managed to pull a few words from the vendor, including directions, but only after buying a cup of coffee. It was then in “a most surly fashion” the vendor declared that he “he only offered assistance to those that bought something!”
I skirted the car park and out of the corner of my eye spotted a crossing and kissing gate about 50 yards west. After negotiating the ditch, I was once more underway on its north side. The country is so wide open I could just make out, a mile away, the rocky pocket of Limestone Corner on Teppermoor Hill, the northern-most point of Hadrian’s Wall, and the entire Roman Empire for that matter.
The Roman ditch than ran nearly the entire length of the wall (except in the steep crags) is in marked evidence on the moors.
Another big bucket list item: When the legionaries were excavating this ditch in front of the north side of curtain wall, they hit dolorite rock, which is more dense than limestone (therefore the puzzlement over the name). The attractions here are the chisel cuts in one large slab, likely made in an attempt to split the boulder. Nothing doing. You can practically see the legionaries throwing down their tools and walking away in disgust.
Here the legionaries met what must have been a stray blob of lava—miles from the deposits up on the crags— in form of an outcropping of hard dolorite/Whinstone mixed with quartz. Try as they might, they could not chip and remove it all. The pieces they could clear lie scattered above the ditch, north and south, while below on the surface of one huge chunk you can see chisel holes, presumably where they tried to drive in wedges to break it apart. Historians and archaeologists, who have spent entire careers postalizing over these holes. Some believe the legionaries gave up and continued to the next segment. Those that came after them were either too stubborn, or laboring under a particularly aggressive centurion, because the vallum (the rear ditch), begun several years after the original fortification, cleanly passes through the same rock formation at the prescribed depth—20 feet wide and 10 feet deep.
A few yards beyond the summit of the hill, is a trig point (or surveying) pedestal, from where you can look out over the North Tyne Valley and the village of Simonburn, where nearby I enjoyed two comfortable stays at the Hallbarns BNB. By now I knew I was nearing my destination, but in the interest of keeping hikers away from the road, where motorists seem to step on it when they see a hiker, the trail bends north, crossing farm fields via kissing gates and ladder stiles. The most prominent among the farms is Black Carts (“cearts” means rocky), where three sections of wall form a broken line north of the highway, the largest of them 500 yards long and including the remains of the 11-foot square turret 29A. There were two such turrets between each milecastle, 160 in all along the wall. This one partially excavated by the antiquarian John Clayton in 1873 and stabilized to its current state by the ministry of Works in the early 1970s.
The author at Black Carts, a private farm with several outstanding sections of wall, that grants permissive access to monuments under care of the government.
Pole stile at private property boundary with permissive access sign posted…
Again, under the permissive access, the owners of this farm and others along the route allow hikers to cross, often sharing the fields with livestock as I did near Black Carts, where a small herd of bulls grazed. A big, black one was off on his own, and as I passed by, raised his head, and gave me a look and a snort. I did not stop, nor did I look in his direction again, but kept going, ready to violate wall protocol and climb up a four-foot-high section.
This was the last of Hadrian’s Wall remnants (and livestock) I would see on this hike, though there would be more in store for my friend John and me at Cawfield and Walltown crags that weekend. Two more ladder stiles and I was on a narrow lane, where brush and dwellings met the pavement with no shoulder, and a sign cautioned me to be aware of vehicles. I hoped it was vice versa…but you never know. (Five years before, near Lanercost, I dove into the gorse to avoid a Volkswagen bending around a lane on two wheels.)
From there, I met the B6318 once again for a two-mile tramp on blacktop to The George. As expected, after about a mile a blister began to form on the ball of my right foot, and I imagined a cold bottle of water and those hammer-hard, microwave resistant scones (softened by butter and honey) at the Chesters Fort café. I picked up the pace, despite the pain, secure in the knowledge that I had mole skins in my pack. Then, finally, there was the Chesters gate across the road…right where I left it a year before.
I had fulfilled my goal and hiked Sewingshields, and now I could truly claim the entire path. Hooray.
I wiped my nose, hitched up my trousers and walked inside.
Notes:
- According to Place-names of Northumberland & Durham by Allen Mawer (1920), Sewingshields in Old English means “Fields of Sedgewine.” As mentioned earlier “shiels” were shelters used post-Roman by shepherds and herders during the seasonable weather. The name could also mean “wellings by the seugh (or ditch),” or “Seaven-shale,” meaning “Seven cottages,” as William Camden called the feature after walking a part of the wall path in the late 16th century. He had to cut his expedition short for fear of Border Reivers.
- After General Wade was bogged down in 1845 attempting to cross Northumberland and Cambria to intercept Bonnie Prince Charlie’s forces, the government started work on a Military Road with a survey across the isthmus in 1749. Construction was complete in 1758.
- According to Jessie Mothersole, this “plantation” (as planted woodlands are known in England) was of recent vintage only in 1920. Here is how she describes it: “The fir-plantation which now shelters the house from the north winds is only of comparatively recent planting. It must have been bleak indeed up there without this protection. The plantation is entered by a stile [still] just on the site of the Wall, and this is really where the crags begin.”