“I hope my rain gear works.”

The thought crossed my mind that morning as I watched wiper blades, as long and spindly as trekking poles, sweep the day’s first raindrops from the windshield of the AD122 bus motoring along the B6318 highway that runs along the Hadrian’s Wall path. 

The author dries off at Magna Fort (The Roman Army Museum).

I was encased head to foot in Patagonia livery, but having consulted my weather app repeatedly since awakening, I was hardly brimming with confidence. Northumbria and Cumbria were to see light rain all day with scattered thunderstorms. It was mid-September after all, as The George Hotel receptionist said, while explaining away the power outage that reduced the breakfast service to dry cereal and instant coffee. To this I replied (with a smile) that having endured a squall in midsummer just past Birdoswald in 2023, I knew that time of year made no difference at all in England—especially Northumberland.

John Olbrantz toasts the end of the day over Sunday Roast at the Twice Brewed Inn.

I was on my way to Once Brewed, 13 miles away from the The George, to meet my old friend John Olbrantz for a mix-and-match day that would take us by foot and bus to three of the more evocative sites in the charismatic central section of the 84-mile path: Cawfields Quarry and Milecastle 42, Great Chesters Fort (Aesica) and Walltown Crags. The Maribeth Collins Director of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University in Salem, John was midway through an exhausting volunteer stint as an excavator at the Vindolanda archaeological site. Two days before I had completed hiking a 12-mile stretch of wall path that I had missed in two earlier treks. https://sanjuanislander.com/mike-vouri-on-ha…s-on-lindisfarne/

In the early 1990’s, we were on staff at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham, where he was deputy director and curator of art, and I public affairs officer and occasional history exhibit curator. As we shared a passion for all things ancient Greek and Roman, we often blue-skied that one day we would tromp Roman ruins together. It finally worked out…30 years later.  

I was expecting to meet John at the Vindolanda bus stop, which is about two miles from the B6318. Imagine my surprise when, as the bus prepared to make a left turn on the road leading to the fort, there was John standing at the side of the road, bare headed in the mist. “There’s John!” I exclaimed, as the driver motored right on past, sticking to his route. I lunged across the aisle, pressed my face to the starboard window and motioned for John to meet us at the dedicated bus stop behind The Sill visitor center. (Luckily, I was the only one aboard.) Hopefully, he would be there after the bus made its round trip to Vindolanda.

It was another bus faux pas. On Saturday we rode another line from Hexham to Corbridge Roman Town and back. After visiting the site, we waited in similarly raw weather outside the entrance, wondering on which side of the road was the stop assigned to the route map. We guessed wrong. The next bus whizzed past without braking, whereupon we ran frantically after it. The driver took pity, pulled up and admitted us onboard. As it so happened, he was heading in the opposite direction, but he generously hauled us a half mile down the road to the sheltered Hexham-bound stop. That bus came along two minutes later.

I ruminated on this during the 10-minute round trip to Vindolanda. As a three-year veteran of the AD122 line, I should have been more explicit in my directions. Now it was starting to rain in earnest as we pulled up to The Sill stop. No John. The driver, who as it turned out, had picked us up in Hexham the day before, read my mind.

“No problem, mate, we’ll pick up your friend wherever he might be,” the driver said, then laughed. “I only hope he don’t run onto the road like you did yesterday.” Sure enough, there was John, waving both arms in front of the Twice Brewed Inn (where we would later have dinner and pints). We pulled over into the parking area and John bounded aboard. As it turned out he had awakened early that morning and hiked the full two miles, uphill, from Vindolanda!

Travel in Wall Country

By walking and riding, we were following a mode of wall viewing, dating to the 1836 establishment of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway (also known as the Tyne Valley Line). The speed and convenience of rail travel opened the ruins to day trippers, who would disembark at stops at centrally located Bardon Mill, a mile southwest of Vindolanda, and Rosehill (now Gilsland). The latter’s sulphur springs were a popular destination for 19th century spa enthusiasts. You could have a soak and take a hike…or vice versa. (I would have opted for the soak by the end of our day.) The rail line and its attractions were extensively employed by Glasgow banker John Buchanan, who extolled its virtues in an 1862 lecture to the Glasgow Archaeological Society. 

“I have personally examined about thirty miles of this ancient barrier at different times, principally in the wildest, and therefore best-preserved portions…,” expounded Buchanan (1802-1878), who served as a president of the society and wrote extensively about the wall under the pen name “Aesica,” also known as Great Chesters. 

But train travel doomed (in his day) the “…quaint-looking house by the wayside…under the somewhat alluring sign, ‘Twice Brewed Ale.’” After more than 100 years, the pub had gone out of business because the road was, “…almost entirely deserted, having been superseded by the railway, and has a peculiarly dreary aspect in its course through the moors.” 

However, in a technological double reverse, the advent of the internal combustion engine shut down railway stations such as Rosehill for lack of passenger traffic and by the 1920s the taps would flow once again at Twice Brewed. 

Through the Bog to Cawfields Quarry

The bus dropped us at the Milecastle Inn, another ancient pub a few miles up the road, which is also a scheduled stop for those wishing to see Cawfields Quarry and Milecastle 42 without having to negotiate Winshield Crags—the highest point on the wall path—and the deep dive of the Bogle Hole farther on (bogle means “goblin” in case you were wondering). This was my fourth time stepping off at the pub, which 20 years ago was a neighborhood hangout called the Common House, and as far back as 1746 dispensed jugs to road workers under the name of North Jerry (“jerry” being another name for a house that served “low ale”). There was also a South Jerry across the river, according to veteran customers who have shared their memories on the pub’s Facebook page, including this one from Pat, having to do with rainy weather: 

“I remember going [to the Common House] one New Year’s Eve. The loo floor was a foot deep in water from the day’s rainfall. I had to climb on the seat to have a piddle. Then jump off! Must be about 40 years ago.”

Off in the distance, the milecastle was barely visible through a veil of rain and fog that swallowed the horizon beyond. Its rectangular u-form seemed to spill from the wall over the grassy slope, which descends into Hole Gap on the east-west wall course and gently gives onto the vallum and pasture bordering the road. As there is less than a mile between this fortlet and those flanking it, archaeologists presume that it was meant to provide a defensive cover for the gap, which may also explain the robust foundation that sustained the gate tower overlooking the north side of the wall. 

Milecastle 42 on Hadrian’s Wall at Cawfields Crags. John Olbrantz is the ”ant-like” figure in the middle of the fortlet.

I returned to Milecastle 42 the day after completing my 2019 trek, taking Buchanan’s train line from Carlisle, which dropped me at Haltwhistle, where I caught the AD122 to the Mile Castle Inn stop. Five days of hiking in 45 minutes. After disembarking that first time (sans pack, which I left at my hotel), I reveled in the sunny weather and my mobile good fortune and bounded across the road to a decision point: I could slog up a mile of macadam road, cut through the provincial park, squeeze though the kissing gate at Hole Gap, ascend the flag stone steps to the top of a pyramidal hillock and snap the photograph that I had been denied during the hike. Or I could slip through a roadside kissing gate, cut diagonally across the pasture, and reach the ruin and photo opportunity in half the time. I chose the latter, but halfway through, an angry bull left his mates and chased me into a bog. Yes, for all you wall veterans, there was a warning sign on the gate. I had seen “Beware of Bull” posted on many such gates over the preceding 10 days but mostly found empty fields and sleepy or indifferent bulls. It was mama cows we had to worry about.

As the rain was picking up and there were no cows or bulls in sight on this latest trek, I assured John that we could cut across easily, and so we began, rain hoods engaged, bent into the weather like a couple of mendicant monks. Walking point, I tried to skirt the same bog and sank to my boot tops in a mix of sucking mud and cow pies. John took note, circled, and found higher ground above the vallum, a Roman ditching system, still visible south of the wall. Slowly, I changed direction and fell in line behind him, moving gingerly for fear of losing my boots, which have since defied two full cans of saddle soap. 

We were hardly great explorers or even experienced thru-hikers. I have friends and acquaintances who have hiked on every continent and at times in extreme conditions who can rightfully claim that distinction. We were white-bread guys with a passion for ancient history on a weekend lark and paying for it with clothing soaked by sweat and rain.

Eventually, we reached the milecastle, stopping first to read the English Heritage exhibit wayside, stippled with raindrops, to the left of the south gate. An illustration depicts the structure as it might have been with its stout walls with rounded corners, crenelated ramparts, vaulted passageways, and the north side affixed to wall with its watch tower. Four courses of massive pier blocks that supported the gateways are still in place, although I missed seeing the pivot holes for the heavy gates, as described by the 19th century cleric/antiquarian John Collingwood Bruce, echoed by his contemporary Buchanan and the writer/archaeologist Jessie Mothersole in 1920.

All three noted that John Clayton (the supreme antiquarian of Hadrian’s Wall) unearthed and set about restoring the fortlet in 1848 after acquiring the property, as well as other sites and sections of the Roman wall. In the 1853 edition of his “The Roman Wall: The Mural Barrier of the North of England,” Bruce notes that before Clayton’s work the milecastle, or “castellum” as the fortlets were then known, was “…nearly covered with its own ruins.” But the “…rubbish (had been) entirely removed from the inside, as well as the out” in time for a drawing he commissioned for inclusion in his book. In the image, the milecastle looks remarkably the same as it does today, although archaeologists completed the work in 1935 and stabilized it in the 1960s, according to the archaeologist Mike Bishop, author of the website “Per Lineum Valli.”

Having explored the ruin twice before, I invited John to poke around while I took the flagstone steps to the top of the pyramid, where the wall advances past a barrier of one-by-fours, laced with a single strand of barbed wire, to hang in midair. A placard warns of a “sudden drop,” the result of a dolorite quarry operation that started carving up the Cawfields lands in 1902, then in 1929 went after the milecastle section as well.

Cawfields Crags milecastle in 1853, following first archaeological excavation.

Having explored the ruin twice before, I invited John to poke around while I took the flagstone steps to the top of the pyramid, where the wall advances past a barrier of one-by-fours, laced with a single strand of barbed wire, to hang in midair. A placard warns of a “sudden drop,” the result of a dolorite quarry operation that started carving up the Cawfields lands in 1902, then in 1929 went after the milecastle section as well.

The Cawfields Quarry operation prior to 1952. Jesse Mothersole escaped the rain in one of the sheds c. 1920.

Fortunately, the government intervened in the 1930s to preserve what was left of the wall, and the quarry finally ceased operations in 1952. The summit offers a view of the milecastle from the same perspective as the illustration in Bruce’s book, a prospect denied me in 2023 because of the sprained ankle. I only made it halfway up that day, although it was in brilliant sunshine, which was more than I could say for my 2024 experience. 

The same view of Cawfields Quarry in September 2024.

Turning into a squall of by-now pelting rain, I spotted John far below in his forest green foul weather gear, taking his time, carefully exploring every inch of the milecastle, ever the art historian. I snapped some photos of my ant-like friend, and clinging to the wire fence alongside the flagstones made my way down to the kissing gate that leads to Hole Gap and the quarry pond park where I knew a toilet, sink and a shelter awaited. It was then I remembered Jessie’s Mothersole’s experience in the same spot more than 100 years before.  

“It was now beginning to rain,” she wrote, “…and by the time I had got through the gap and into the Cawfields quarry yard it was coming down heavily, so I sheltered in the shed of the quarry.”

Great idea and I was ready to be on my way. But first John, now finished in the milecastle, had to climb the flagstone steps, after we posed together for a photograph. It was pouring by the time we reached the park building that fronts the pond and the pyramidal hill we had so recently climbed. While John studied the exhibit wayside at the pond I made a beeline for the shelter, where another hiker occupied the sole picnic table.

“Do you mind if I join you,” I asked.

“You’re all right,” he responded. This might also have meant “good-bye” or any number of responses, but I took a chance, doffed my sodden pack and rain cover and sat down heavily. He was at least 30 years younger than me and in shorts. We shook our heads and smiled in unison. Nothing more needed to be said. By the time John arrived, I had already readjusted my rain cover and taken a couple of pulls from my water bottle, and with downspouts gurgling was in no hurry to leave. 

But I knew we only had so much time for the round trip to Great Chesters fort, about a mile away, if we wanted to return to the Milecastle Inn and catch our bus to the Roman Army Museum. Otherwise, it would be an undulating three and half soaking miles via the “Nine Nicks of Thirlwall” to Walltown Crags with the museum about a half a mile beyond. So, we shouldered our packs once again and soldiered on.

As the old song goes, we could stand a little rain.

Great Chesters: Splendor Under the Grass

Our next stop was Great Chesters, one of 16 forts along the wall holding 500-man garrisons that provided troops for the milecastles and watchtowers, as well as for mobile striking forces north of the wall. The fort is not a tourist destination in the manner of Housesteads, Chesters, Birdoswald and especially Vindolanda, which all have exhibit waysides and collections on view in site museums. Last excavated in the 1930s, Great Chesters has long been part of a working farm, its interior ruins a bare outline under the turf throughout its five-acre boundary, except where the perimeter walls and defensive ditches are still in evidence. 

Last excavated in the 1930s, Great Chesters fort has long been part of a working farm, its interior ruins a bare outline under the turf throughout its five-acre boundary

But there were no tourist attractions anywhere along wall course in 1720, and Great Chesters stood tall when another antiquarian and cleric, John Horsely, ventured into the not-always-safe hinterlands of Northumbria to explore and document the ruins. “The fort at Great Chesters must be reckoned among the number of those that have been well preserved,” he wrote. “Some part of the original stone wall is standing at a good height. The ditch is also visible on all sides…” 

The altar at Great Chesters (taken in 2023). Note the wine pitcher in relief.

We slogged that perimeter, the rain increasing in intensity, first going to the west gate, then tracing the wall and ditch to southeast gate, where an altar with a relief of a wine pitcher on one side sets in what would have been the guard room. This has excited writers and passers-by over the years, although one school of thought is that someone imported the object to the site from another location in the 1920s. This may be the altar spotted in the field south of the site, as Horsely reported, but who knows? Wherever it originated and what it commemorated —a paean to Bacchus perhaps—hikers have left coins on it over the years.

The most astounding feature at Great Chesters is the strong room of the headquarters building, its vaulted portal remarkably complete, as is the underground chamber.

But the most astounding feature in the fort is the strong room of the headquarters building, its vaulted portal remarkably complete, as is the underground chamber. While Horsely does not mention it, an 18th century hiker, John Skinner (1772-1839), does, making note of it in an 1801 paper and 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.” 

The current farmer has strung the perimeter of the strong room with a chicken wire, not so much to protect the ruin, but to prevent his flock from taking a tumble while grazing. It is not fool- (or -sheep) proof. Two of them had broken in and were calmly munching away when I passed through in 2023. They were nowhere in sight within the old fort on this latest visit, and the fence was broken down on all sides. Was the farmer taking precautions with the rain? Maybe.

Lovingly restored among wind-bent conifers, the wall at Walltown Crags hangs from the edge of the crags that loom over another glacial pond.

The antiquarian Dr. John Lingard (1771-1851), following an 1800 inspection of the site (among many others), wrote that the floor of the strong room “…had on It a great quantity of ashes, 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 (albeit a modest one) from the northern source of Haltwhistle burn (creek).

The Roman name, Aesica, came from the Gaulish-Celtic god called “Esus” or “Aisus,” who combined the military prowess of Mars with the facility of a woodsman. It was not unusual for the Romans to incorporate local gods into their pantheon, both as a matter of political expediency and to appease the ranks. The legions had become a multi-cultural from the first century CE, and this was especially evident among the auxiliaries from throughout the Roman world who composed the garrisons. 

There may also have been a bit of hedging. The legionary’s relationship with his gods was more a mutually beneficial contract than supplication or worship. 

“If you help me survive the coming battle and provide spoils aplenty, I will slaughter a dozen rabbits in your honor.” 

And it never paid to castigate a foreign god. A few splendid examples of this are depicted in the well-researched 2005-2007 Home Box Office series, “Rome.” Two of the main protagonists, legionaries Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, entreat the gods throughout the series, but the most telling scene comes in Egypt. The two are found sweating in the meager shade of a decapitated head that once topped a mammoth pharaonic statue, symbolizing the decline of the once-dominant Nile empire.

“The Gypo gods must be right wasters to make a place like this,” Pullo complains.

“Don’t speak ill of the gods in their own country,” Vorenus chides. “…These gods are old and powerful. Egypt was a great nation long before Rome.”

“Was it?” Pullo quips. “Mumped it up now, haven’t they?” 

As with the Vindolanda milestone, the only in situ milestone in England, I have always found untouched remnants, such as those at Great Chesters, more compelling. They are as they have been for 2,000 years, save for the sections that have provided quarries for churches and fortified farmhouses.

John Olbrantz slogs away from the southeast gate at Great Chesters. Note the altar top left center.

Keeping an eye on the time, we left the fort and hustled back to the road through a herd of cows to catch the bus to the Roman Army Museum (on the site of the Magna fort, once held by Hamian archers from Syria). I had it timed to the minute, or so I thought. The bus was late. By then, I had sweat through my undershirt, which combined with my thoroughly inundated rain gear, chilled me to the bone. (And no spare undershirt. Dumb.) But we warmed up on arrival with hot coffee and the cheese, chocolate and apples that John had wisely packed. 

The Squalls of Walltown

The museum, run by the Vindolanda Trust, is a three-dimensional primer on the legions during their 300–year occupation of Britain. We covered every inch, every decade, every shield, every spear of it while waiting for our clothing to dry before heading out to our next stop—Walltown Crags. I especially enjoyed the film, narrated by Brian Cox, about the life of a legionary pulling guard duty on the wall, with splendid aerial shots of the central sector over which I had hiked in three trips. But soon the rain stopped and undaunted by the leaden overcast, we collected our packs from the holding closet and set off for a mile hike down the road and up the hill to the crags. In truth, as my boots squished, I would have given this final leg a pass, but John had never seen the crags and was excited by the prospect.

As with Cawfields, Walltown was a dolorite rock quarry that imperiled sections of the wall until private purchases and government intervention put a stop to it. The volcanic rock, also known as Whinstone, saw only limited use by the Romans as it was too hard to chip and shape. It has mainly been applied to the macadam county roads of the 20th century. 

 

The way the wall snakes along the crags at Walltown recalls a painting by Alan Sorrell, which depicts the wall as it might have been at its peak

Lovingly restored among wind-bent conifers, the wall here hangs from the edge of the crags that loom over another glacial pond. A single strand of barbed wire affixed on two-foot stakes protects hikers from themselves. The masonry seems more precise than any along the wall path, and the way the wall snakes along the crags recalls the paintings of Alan Sorrell, which depict the wall as it might have been at its peak, including a view of this very stretch. Walltown was restored a bit later than the John Clayton-owned sections through a technique called “consolidation,” where the scatter is gathered and pieced together utilizing mortar rather than the drystone technique employed at Cawfields.

To reach the wall from the quarry parking area requires about a 200-foot ascent, dodging sheep pies and carefully negotiating the rain-slick grass. Somehow, through muscle memory or whatever, I remembered the less intense shortcuts to the top of the bluffs from my two earlier visits. However, as we ascended the clouds descended and soon, we were beating through a squall to reach the Walltown turret (45a), which is the best place on the crags for a photograph. The sweeping prospect on sunny days, combined with masonry features, has led archaeologists to believe the turret was a stand-alone watchtower decades before construction of the wall, much like the signal towers in the “Lord of the Rings” films. A plume from the turret was visible from the Pike Hill tower on flatlands more than six miles west, according to the exhibit wayside. 

John Olbrantz and the author at Cawfields Crags, soaked, but no worse for wear.

Soaked to the bone once more, we decided we had seen all we needed to see and picked our way down the hill, and through the quarry, to the car park and its compact visitor center, where a tour bus full of seniors (like us) from Michigan had just pulled in. Fortunately, we made it into the building before they disembarked. Even so, we changed tables to avoid the throngs lining up for the single toilet. As a former Road Scholar group leader, I know the drill. While this was going on, others in the group (who either had stalwart bladders or they used the toilet aboard bus) were heading up the hill to view the wall—by now in brilliant sunshine! No packs, no water bottles, no hiking sticks, no squall.

The dead end of Hadrian’s Wall, cut off by quarrying in the first half of the 20th Century.

 

The Sunday Roast

We felt like crusty old salts as we awaited the AD122, which blessedly arrived on schedule. Following a brief roll back up the B6318, we disembarked where the day began at The Sill visitor center, which is short walk from the Twice Brewed Inn, where a placard on the door promoted “The Sunday Roast.” This was the same meal served to William Hutton, yet another clergyman and the first bonafide thru-hiker on the wall path, when he stopped at the inn in 1801. He was served “…a pudding…about as big as a peck measure; and a piece of beef out of the copper, perhaps equal to half a calf.” Well…our meal when it arrived, although bountiful, was slightly less formidable. But we were no less ravenous than the 15 drovers, who arrived shortly after Hutton:

“Every piece went down as if there was no barricade in the throat. One of those pieces was more than I have seen eaten at a meal by a moderate person. They convinced me that eating was the ‘chief end of man.’ The tankard too, like a bowl lading water out of the well, was often emptied, often filled.”

Ok. I confess. We had three pints apiece. The night closed in. A cab took us home. The next day dawned sunny and warm…and remained so all day long. John returned to his archaeological dig for one more week, while I headed east to Newcastle and the start of the long journey home.

And so ended my final excursion on Hadrian’s Wall.

1. An apocryphal story has it that local drovers and farmers demanded a second brewing of the establishment’s weak ale to make it stronger. Another is that the name stems from the two hillocks that rise behind the building.
2. It is still possible to indirectly reach the central sector of the wall by rail from Newcastle and Carlisle by connecting with the AD122 bus at Hexham and Haltwhistle. 
3. The name of Bishop’s website is derived from the Notitia Dignitatum a document that listed military tribunes and their civilian counterparts throughout the Roman Empire in the late Fourth Century CE. The northwestern section of the Notitia identifies the officers and posts “along the line of the wall,” or Per Lineum Valli. The document was a gold mine for 18th century scholars, pointing the way to discovery of the ancient names and locations such as Aesica (Great Chesters), Cilirnum (Chesters) and Amboglanna or Banna (Birdoswald). The only forts along the wall that go by their Roman era names are Vindolanda, once known as Little Chesters or Chesterholm and Segedunum, located at Wallsend near the mouth of the River Tyne.