Length : 85 miles
Date Started : 17th September 2011
Date completed : 4th May 2014
Companions : Andy Roughley, Helen Smith, Serena Armstrong, Dave Morris, Wendy Guest, John Hutchinson ( in part ) Chris Cooper, Rachel Fallows plus a friend, Catherine Seville, Pamela Banks, Janet Whittaker, Phil Burton, Steve Taylor
Guide : Hadrian's Wall Path - Mark Richards ( Cicerone )
By popular consensus this was the next LYPWG long distance trail project after finishing the Thirlmere Way. We started it in September 2011, a notable month for me for work-related reasons.
The plan was to walk it over four weekends with the last partly given over to socialising in Newcastle although I was keen to make sure that this consideration did not take precedence over the walking and sightseeing en route. We decided to walk it West to East ( i.e. Bowness- on- Solway to Wallsend ) because the Bowness to Carlisle section is largely a shortened version of the penultimate Cumbria Coastal Way section and doing that again on the final day would be too much of an anti-climax.
For the first weekend eleven of us ( including Julie and Simon ) stayed at Green View Lodges, Welton where we enjoyed the hospitality of our friend Colin and his jacuzzi once again. This time round the pub next door was open for food and though I only had a dessert there ( we self-catered ) everyone else gave it the thumb's- up. Julie was disappointed that another family who had planned to come up and share baby-sitting duties couldn't make it.
Bowness-on-Solway is a quiet and remote place and it took us a short while to find the actual start/end of the Trail which is a little gazebo overlooking the Solway Firth. The walk itself was uneventful, the long road trudge no more enthralling than two years earlier, although the bus journey back from Carlisle was enlivened by a pisshead on the back seat groaning about how much he needed the loo the entire distance
On the Sunday two more members drove up for the day. We walked from Carlisle to Newtown, just short of where the first visible section of the Wall itself is to be found, the lack of Wall being a frequent cause for comment over that weekend. Around lunchtime we experienced the only serious rainfall of the whole adventure but it lifted soon afterwards. We had a tea stop at Lanercost Priory. Some of us stayed over till the Monday, two of the girls going on to a rainy week of caravaning in Scotland while we went on to Keswick.
The next stage was undertaken in July 2012. I booked two self-catering cottages at a remote farm Talkinhead near Brampton. We had another last minute drop out but at least he paid up. Two girls who signed up later stayed at a B and B in the town rather than risk paying extra for an unused bed. As it happened the landlady had a spare cottage that weekend and invited us to spread out. It had a fantastic view, was clean and comfortable and the evening meal we ordered on the Sunday night was excellent. Simon enjoyed playing with the puppies on site.
The walking was of a much higher quality and the weather was very good. Some of us had lunch at Lanercost Priory; others just ate their sandwiches there. We walked as far as the museum at Birdoswald on the first day. On the second day the plan was to walk to Once Brewed ; one girl placed her car there early in the morning to get back in time for Murray v Federer in the Wimbledon Final. When we got to Walltown Crags and stopped for lunch she pressed on to the finish. However by Cawfields Quarry one member was feeling under the weather so we called it a day there and caught the bus from the Milecastle Inn rather than marching on. We (Julie, Simon and I) drove off to Keswick for the rest of the week as soon as we'd had tea; some stayed on and did some walking on the monday.
At this point one member bailed out of the project due to a non-resolvable personal issue which had clouded the first two weekends to some extent. The plan was to do the next stage in the autumn but we couldn't find a date that suited everyone who was committed to doing the full route and so the third stage took place just over a year later. This time we stayed at The Twice Brewed Inn which turned out to be the poorest accommodation of the four.The rooms and evening meals were OK but the packed lunches were poor and the breakfasts terrible. It wasn't an ideal venue for Simon either. Although he and Julie got to visit Housesteads on the sunday she decided not to come up for the final stage.
On the Saturday we walked from Cawfields to Tower Tye, stopping for 20 minutes at a country fair at Steel Rigg. We stopped for lunch at Housesteads but didn't explore the fort. Just after Housesteads the long continuous stretch of Wall ends and the scenery gradually begins to decline. At Tower Tye we had to wait an hour for the bus back so we decided to do a car shuffle instead the following day. We walked from Tower Tye to Halton Shields the highlight being a very nice tea shop at St Oswald's near Chollerford .
We decided to do the final stage on the first May Bank Holiday the following year although two of those involved didn't actually sign up for it. Without Julie and Simon influencing the choice of accommodation I plumped for a well-reviewed farm-based hostel , Houghton North Farm in Heddon-On-The-Wall. and wasn't disappointed. The beds were comfy, the place was spotlessly clean and the landlady couldn't have been more friendly and helpful as well as rustling up scrambled eggs at breakfast time. We were also near a nice pub The Swan which did good meals ; the Carvery on the Saturday night was good value for £5.95.
The rest of the Trail was a so-so walk but we were expecting that. The route from Halton Shields to Heddon-on -the-Wall hugged the B-road, often just a hedge's width away and we were in Heddon by 1.30. After stopping for a brew and some victuals at the tea shop in the village we decided to walk on a bit further to Newburn on the outskirts of Newcastle. This stretch involved a steep drop to the banks of the Tyne and then a flat but hard on the feet stroll through urban parkland. The walk ended at a not particularly friendly pub The Boat House - where the football-watching locals jealously guarded their half-time scollops and sausages- from where we caught a taxi back.
The final day was all tarmac and concrete. First it follows an old railway line through Newcastle's western suburbs to a bridge over the A1 and then a concrete walkway into the city centre. We had lunch either from Gregg's or a market vendor on the waterfront then ploughed on towards Wallsend alongside the Tyne. After an unwelcome climb up the bank where the landscape became industrial we had just a tedious tarmac trudge for a couple of miles along another old railway before arriving at the Segedunum roman fort and museum which meant we had completed the trail. The museum allowed us in to take some pictures then we went to the cafe for drinks and over-generous slices of cheesecake We then caught a taxi into Newcastle for a celebratory drink in the city centre.
Of course this is the first National Trail to feature here. The waymarking throughout was excellent and what with the general direction being pretty obvious all the way, the guide hardly had to come out of the rucksack. With the unappealing sections of hard surface walking at either end it can't be given top marks but was certainly worth doing.
