 Walking
Hadrian’s Wall—The Start
Allen Johnson — 23 June 2005
[Photo at left—Four of us at start of Wall
walk.]
"This part of the wall is 2,000-years old," I told
Emily and Jessica as we stood at Wallsend by a low section
of Hadrian's Wall.
"Can we touch it?" Jessica asked.
"Sure, go ahead and feel it," I said. They
kneeled and carefully felt the smooth stones.
"They feel really old," Emily said.
"And this is what it looked like when it was built."
We climbed the stairs to the top of the reconstructed section
of the wall, 15-feet high and 10-foot thick.
"These stones don't feel so old," Emily said as
she ran her hand over the rough, reconstructed stones.
We walked back to the Segedunum, the Roman fort at the start
of the wall. Segedunum means "strong fort"
in the Celtic language. The foundation of the fort has
been excavated from beneath the 10 foot of dirt that accumulated
in the past 2,000 years. A museum there shows what Roman
life was like at the time of the wall. Recovered Roman
helmets, weapons and utensils are displayed there. We
took the elevator up to the 100-foot-high observation tower
to get a bird's eye view of the fort and surroundings.
Then Emily, Jessica, Gloria and I started our walk.
Connie and Linda, our support team, got in the van and headed
for our end-of-the-day point on Scotswood Road.
"There are five cats," Emily said. Five
black and white cats sat in the parking lot by the start of
the walk, a very good omen. Gloria and the girls tried
to get close enough to pet them, but the cats shied away.
We climbed the stairs from the street to the elevated walkway
laid on an abandoned railroad bed. Below us giant cranes
of the Swan shipyard swung huge metal plates through the air
to the shipbuilding cradle. We passed the Ship's Inn,
a 200-year-old pub that still caters to the dockworkers and
sailors of the area. The Tyne River lay about 200 yards
below us.
"I like your dog," Emily said to a lady walking
a little black Scottie dog.
"There's a snail," Jessica said, pointing to a
three-inch long snail carrying its shell on its back.
The area was quite rural with horses grazing in the fields
and a dozen kinds of wildflowers growing alongside the walk:
white and yellow daisies, blue cornflowers, pink and white
wild roses, clover, a flower that looked like Queen Anne's
lace, brilliant red poppies, a two-foot high plant with dandelion-like
yellow flowers and pointy leaves, purple thistle-like flowers,
a yellow jack-in-the pulpit, blue forget-me-nots and a pink
fuzzy flower.
Gloria and I followed the paved switchback path down the
hill to the riverbank while Emily and Jessica ran straight
down the grassy hill. Then we followed the Tyne River
into Newcastle and passed beside the Millenium Bridge, a beautiful
arched bike and pedestrian affair. The walkway is also
shaped like an arch and raises to let boat traffic through.
They say it looks like a winking eye when it does. We
stopped under a 15-foot diameter globe for lunch---sandwiches
from the Executive Lunch Wagon. We continued our walk
past sunbathers and fisherman catching cod, perch, whitefish
and salmon to the Vicker-Armstrong plant where Connie and
Linda were waiting for us with the van
The second day we started our walk by the old coal loading
docks. Newcastle was the coal-producing center of Britain
for hundreds of years. The path changed from a paved bikeway
to a narrow dirt trail beside the river. At Heddon-on-the-Wall
we climbed a gigantic hill up from the river and through working
farms to the second visible section of the wall. There
we found Connie and Linda celebrating with a wedding party
at the Three Tuns Pub.
"They invited us to the wedding and reception,"
Linda said.
"Let's go see the wall," I suggested
This section of the wall is about 100-feet long and 3 foot
high. Emily and Jessica wanted to touch it.
"This feels old, too," Emily said as she ran her
hand along the smooth limestone blocks.
 [Photo
at the right—Emily and Jessica at middle
of Wall walk.] The third day we followed the
Military Road from Heddon-on-the-Wall to Down Hill.
In the 1700s, the British built the Military Road right where
the wall had been, using the wall stones for the roadbed so
the wall is literally under the road. The defensive
ditch they dug in front of the wall and the Vallem (ditch)
they dug behind the wall were visible as we followed Hadrian's
Wall path. We came to one of the limestone quarry the
Roman's used to get the rocks for the wall.
"Can I run down the hill?" Emily asked.
"Sure."
At the end of our ten-mile hike she and Jessica still had
enough energy to make three trips up and down the steep grassy
hill to the bottom of the quarry.
The fourth day we continued our hike across beautiful grassy
fields and through a pine forest (Stanley Plantation) so thick
that even with the bright sun overhead it was too dark to
read my map. We climbed a windy hill where the trees
all lean to the east.
"Do you know why the trees lean that way?" I asked.
"Because the wind is always blowing up the hill from
that direction," Emily said point windward.
A huge beech tree grew beside the path at the top of the
hill. The branches curved around every which way and
grew close to the ground.
"Can we climb it?" Jessica asked.
"Good idea," I said.
 Jessica
climbed up one low branch and curled up in a sweeping curved
section while Emily climbed another branch. [Photo at Left—Jessica
resting in Beech tree.]
"I could stay here all day," Jessica announced.
We ate the rest of our lunch (cheese, yogurt and Pringles)
under the tree and then walked to Chollerford. Just
outside of Chollerford we found the third section of the wall.
This one extended for several hundred feet, about eight-foot
high. The sections kept getting higher and longer as
we headed toward the middle of the country. The base
of a 10-foot square observation turret stood at the end of
the wall section.
"This room isn't very big," Emily said as she
stood inside the turret base.
"The turret had a second level for the soldiers to
sleep on and a third level for them to watch from. They
ate and worked in this lower level," I explained.
"The turret was manned with six to ten soldiers who worked
three shifts around the clock so someone was always on guard.
There wouldn't be more than four or five soldiers in the lower
rooms at one time."
On the fifth day we visited the Roman cavalry Fort at Chollerford
before we started our walk.
"What's that pretty bird, Grandpa?" Emily asked
as we walked through the tall grass to the fort site.
A long-tailed, brightly colored pheasant stood in the grass
just a few feet from the trail.
"That's a pheasant," I said, "an edible game
bird."
"You better not eat it," Emily replied.
"It's too pretty."
We toured the excavated bathhouse of this 2,000-year-old
fort. The remaining walls were only a few feet high,
but we could clearly see where the changing room was, the
cold room and cold bath, the warm room for massage, the hot
steam room (sauna) and the hot bath. There was a boiler
at one end of the building and at the other end a furnace
to warm the air that traveled under the raised floor to heat
the building. Two thousand years ago while we were living
in mud huts, caves and teepees, the Romans had elaborate stone
building with central heat and flush lavatories.
We could see a section of Hadrian's Wall across the nearby
Tyne River and make out the remains of the Roman bridge abutment.
After seeing the bathhouse we toured the museum and saw Roman
coins, iron implements, sandals, a model of the fort and altars
to their gods.
Today's walk started at Housesteads, a large Roman Fort
in the middle of the hill country. We had to climb a
400-foot-high hill just to get from the parking lot to the
wall. At the top of the hill we encountered a mile-long
section of the well-preserved wall snaking up and down the
hills. This part of the wall is about eight-foot high
and we were allowed to walk on top of it. It started
to rain so we put on our rain jackets and hats. The hills
were so steep I couldn't see much as I climbed up, just leaned
forward and kept my head down to see where I could place my
feet. We stopped often to look around and take photos.
The scenery was spectacular with 200-foot high cliffs (crags)
facing north, high hills to the east and west and a deep valley
to the south.
Broomlee Lough (lake) lay just north of the wall.
I told the girls about the legend of the Treasure of Broomlee.
Years ago, a wealth farmer put his valuables in an iron chest
and hid the chest in the lake when he learned that robbers
were headed his way. He never went back for his chest.
Supposedly the only way to recover the treasure is to hitch
two perfectly matched oxen to a chain made by a seventh-generation
smithy, hook it to the chest and drag it up from the bottom
of the lake.
"Why can't we just get a scuba tank and dive down to
get the treasure?" Emily asked.
"According to the legend you need the perfectly matched
oxen and seventh generation chain," I said.
"How would you ever get two perfectly matched oxen?"
Jessica asked. "Emily and I are twins, but we aren't
perfectly matched. I don't think you could do that."
"You're probably right," I said. "That's
why no one has ever recovered the treasure."
The girls talked about perfectly matched oxen, metal detectors
and chains for the next half-hour as we hiked past long section
of exposed wall, observation turrets and mile castles.
This remote area contains the best-preserved section of Hadrian's
wall. We stopped and rested on remains of the turrets
and talked about what it must have been like for the Roman
soldiers living there 2,000 years ago.
"They didn't have TV or a CD player or anything to
entertain themselves," Emily said.
"But they had board games and outdoor games to keep
them busy," I said. "They spent most of their
time working or keeping warm or drinking."
As we approached the end of our strenuous 12-mile hike,
Jessica started lagging behind so we stopped often to rest.
With one mile to go, Jessica decided she could smell the vanilla
ice cream from the snack bar where we parked our car and she
shot ahead of Emily and I. We had to pick up our pace
to catch up with her. We jogged to the parking lot,
bought a vanilla ice cream bar for Jessica, chocolate ones
for Emily and I and celebrated the successful completion of
the first 50 miles of our Hadrian's Wall walk.
Newsletter Archive:
Setting
Goals—The Ironman
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 1
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 2
Walking
Hadrian's Wall — Part 3
Canadian
Rocky Mountain Horseback Adventure |
