Eventually, we staggered into The Reading Room, a cute-as cafe in an old schoolroom belonging to a tiny village five hours down the track from Carlisle. Enough said.
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| We have met many, many sheep and cattle on our path. Or is it their path? |
It's too easy to dwell on the niggles when you are walking long distances. As the journey has gone on, these annoyances tend to be centred on feet and legs and their various aches and pains. However, I am determined to remain relentlessly positive. (Come on legs, let's do this!)
Long-distance walking has proved to be too much for Bruce's body, though, so he has used public transport to complete each leg since day two. (There's an excellent summer bus service designed to carry tourists between major Wall sites. I puzzled over its service number for a few days. AD122 seemed weirdly random...) Tour Leader has morphed seamlessly into Support Crew, bless him.
Our days and evenings have been enriched by the people we meet on this walk. On Day 1, leaving the western shores of the Solway, a massive tidal waterway dividing England from Scotland, we walked quickly (because we still could back then!) past a man in a shed. Our mistake. Roger called us back, found out where we came from, consulted his dog-eared exercise book and in no time was assembling the 'Picton 11,484 miles' fingerboard for photographic posterity.
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| All smiles at the start |
In the next few minutes we learned that he was 75, had survived prostate cancer (gory details gratis), loved riding motorbikes and travelling the world, preferred using iPhone cameras, and was manning the signpost (which he also built) to raise funds for cancer research. It would've taken a hard heart to resist Roger's call.
The following evening found us at Abbey Bridge B&B. This has been the highlight of our stayovers so far. The owners, Sue and Tim, have created a haven for wall walkers. Boots and wet clothing were dried overnight for us. Tea and coffee-making facilities included the rarity of real milk (thoughtfully delivered in a thermos flask by the owner's two year old granddaughter). USB charging points on either side of the bed meant we could do away with clumsy plugs-on-plugs for the night. Small details, big impact.
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| Fortunately, walkers were allowed across the bridge |
The best part was that four couples sat down to dinner that evening. We were a cosmopolitan lot. The Finnish school teachers. The young Swiss/German veterinarians. The sprightly British octogenarians, both also retired teachers. And the Kiwis. Education was on the agenda, though only briefly. Mr Finn shook his head dolefully when we raised the Finnish education model. No, he said, there have been cutbacks. Buildings in poor condition have taken their toll on his health. Things are not what they were. Anyway, enough of education. This rambling anecdote is meant to be about the elderly English couple.
He was a miner's son from up north who became a history teacher. She oozed class, was dressed formally for dinner and spoke with that beautifully articulated manner of bygone times. They were on their way to Keswick in their little Ford Ka (avoiding motorways, I hoped) to revisit their Lake District honeymoon six decades ago. Sigh...
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| Front or back? |
Defying her conventional background, Mrs EE trained to become a primary teacher after she was married. There were other hints of unconventionality too. She had been to an Oktoberfest in her youth, she told us. Mr EE hinted at dancing on tables. She blushed but neither confirmed nor denied.
The next morning at breakfast, Mrs EE apologised profusely for eating kippers in our presence, assuming other nationalities would find this frightfully quaint. None of us dared to disagree. She was delightfully taken aback to discover we all preferred to drink tea at breakfast. I can only assume that she had appropriated tea-drinking as a purely British institution. We farewelled them the next morning as they headed off in their wee car to revisit their romantic past. Bless.
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| Update: Support Crew has found himself a bike, spending the last two days of our epic adventure back in the saddle. He is a much happier man for it. |
Speaking of the past, time to address the reason for this walk: to follow the line of the wall built for the Emperor Hadrian, started in AD122 and completed in just six years. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site (more here), Hadrian's Wall stretches from Bowness-on-Solway in the west to Wallsend, a suburb of Newcastle in the east.
For much of the walk, trekkers must rely on the guidebook to point out hints to the Wall's presence, perhaps a raised mound in a field, or an inconspicuous pile of stones nearby. But once we reached the high country, the Wall rose in all of its magnificence to meet us. Not only the three metre wide structure itself but the earthworks needed to create the vellum or deep ditch running alongside it. The sheer scale of the enterprise was breathtaking. Slave labour helped, of course.
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| Sycamore Gap. I need to revisit Prince of Thieves. |
The most striking section of the Wall traversed a series of crags with a sheer northern face that would have helped keep the ravaging hordes at bay. From a distance, the Wall snakes along and up and down the likes of Hotbanks and Sewingshields crags, the warm stone contrasting nicely with the rich green pasture, punctuated by colourful clumps of livestock. So very picturesque.
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| The end. Wallsend, that is. 147km across England. Well done, feet! |
The Wall served its purpose for the three centuries that remained of Roman rule in Britain. It was planned and constructed with ingenuity and precision, as we would expect of the Romans.
If any modern-day leader were to consider building himself a wall, he would do well to learn from the past. Oh wait, that's not going to happen, is it?
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| Millennium Bridge, Newcastle |
Excellent - good walk! The history behind it keeps you going I guess!
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