Walk of Hadrian’s Wall—Part 2

Birdoswald Fort

From disasters onward

By James T. Carney

[Sequel to “Thirteen years later”]

We then went on from Landercost Priory Church to Birdoswald Fort, where we encountered another disaster. We missed the last bus back to Carlisle. We were marooned in the middle of the wilderness by a Roman remains with the shop closed down by that time of day. By our good luck, another two hikers were coming from the opposite direction and landing there at the same time. They had a mobile phone with them and called a taxi, which dropped them off and put us on the major bus line, where we caught a bus back to Carlisle only to face more disasters the next day.
    On Sunday, we got up to find that it was raining cats and dogs. We missed the first bus to the east and so went to explore Carlisle Castle, which Jim and I had seen on our first day in Carlisle. It is an interesting experience and was certainly a well-fortified place. The castle had exhibits on all of these events in the history of Carlisle. The castle continued for two centuries to be the headquarters of the British Border Regiment, and some of the halls (which Rich and I did not see) contain the history of the regiment through the centuries.

    Rich and I left the Museum to catch our bus to Birdoswald and missed it because we went to the wrong station. Disaster. Fortunately, we were at the train station and able to take a train and a taxi to the wall near Gilsland. Thus, we started to go east to west instead of west to east.
    The rain stopped and we walked about four miles to Birdoswald, where we were able to take the bus (AD 122 for the date of Hadrian’s commencement of the wall) to Carlisle. We even crossed the Willowford Bridge, where Jim’s feet had given out 13 years before, and before the bridge had been built; Jim and I would have had to ford the river but Rich and I walked across the prize-winning bridge with dry feet. We were able to end the day slightly ahead of schedule. We then climbed a steep hill up to Birdoswald and started to look at the fort. Unfortunately, the bus came too quickly to enable us to get a thorough look at the Fort, although that is the fort along the Wall that has been the subject of the most archaeological investigation.

Monday morning we hit the most scenic part of the Wall country. We took a bus to Once Brewed and stayed at the Twice Brewed inn. The story goes that in the ’45 [1645], General Wade was marching the British army from New Castle to Carlisle and stopped at the inn now known at the Twice Brewed Inn and had a pint of ale. He complained bitterly about it and had his host brew it again with the resulting delay enabling the Bonnie Prince to capture Carlisle and begin his tragic march south to Prestonpans, where his force of wild clansmen—armed basically with shields and swords—confronted a British army armed with muskets. The ensuing defeat led to retreat and the final disaster at the Culloden, which ended the Highland clans as a military force. The inn got renamed as the Twice Brewed.

    We set out from Twice Brewed (which was our favorite inn) as soon as we dumped out bigger packs and headed up (and up and down and then up and then down and up and up and down) still doing the wall in reverse order—i.e., going east to west rather than west to east. The scenery was unbelievable. We have tons of pictures including a picture of the Sycamore tree that stands in the gap between two of the crags (or hills). Fortunately, we did the Winshields Crags first, which is the highest and the most difficult part of the Wall. (The Romans, as great engineers, had built the wall on the very top of mountains to make it more difficult to attack.) In addition to the beautiful scenery, the Wall (or the top three or four feet) was visible during the entire stretch. (The Wall was 10 feet high and 6 to 9 feet wide but the dirt of centuries has covered up over half of its height in those areas where man has left the wall undisturbed. Probably if they evacuated the wall, they would find part it along the entire 80-mile stretch.)
    At some points along the way the drop from the top of the crag to the grounds was 500 yards. This was the perfect spot for a murder, since no one could ever prove that the victim was pushed as opposed to slipped and gone over. If one is interested in eliminating an unwanted spouse but is not into the beheading business (or can not claim the defense of sovereign immunity), this locale furnishes ample opportunity for a low-cost termination of covertures.

Once we got from Winshields Crags (and the other crags) to the Roman Museum near Gilsland, where we had started the previous day, we visited the Roman Army Museum there and then grabbed a Wall bus and went east to Households, where we started climbing and going east to west again, arriving back at the Twice Brewed Inn by early evening. I found that my thighs were sore for the rest of the trip from this day’s climbing but at least my blister did not bother me, although I still had it when I get home.
    Much to my surprise, I found that the daylight was getting quite short, so that dawn broke around 7:00 a.m. and sunset occurred by 12 hours later. This left us less time to hike than I had hoped and prevented us from seeing many of the forts that I would have liked to see, although in the middle stretch of the Wall almost all the mile castles as well as the turrets were visible at least in terms of the foundations.
    We had a good time at the Once Brewed Inn, which means we downed several pints of beer each night. We found, except for the folks in Carlisle, that everyone we met along the trip was great on giving us directions and helping us, and we had some interesting conversations with some of the people. Had I to do this over again, I would have abandoned Carlisle (in which we spent four nights) a night earlier for the Twice Brewed Inn. (Of course, one thing that immensely complicated this trip was the fact that we could not carry our luggage—given Rich’s sleeping machine—and always had to keep luggage in base camps and move it in advance when we shifted camps.) When Jim and I made our trip, we were planning to, and did, carry our back packs on most days—leaving them in Carlisle only on the first day of walking and taking the bus west to the end of the Wall at Browness on the Solway and walking back to Carlisle.
    The one thing I observed about the English is that the women all had straight hair. I saw only one woman with curly hair during the entire trip. Also, all British women seem very short or very tall. No one seems to be middle height. British women fall into two types. First is the twiggy type—thin as a concentration-camp victim. Second is the big and bony type. Almost all of them have horsey faces.

The next day we set off from Once Brewed (hiking along the road for 2.5 miles because we missed the bus again—too late) and went from Housesteads to Chesters, both of which Donna, I, and the Whites had seen on our trip to England. Housesteads was the biggest Roman fort on the wall and placed below the major crags. We went up through the fort (with no time to inspect it) and started up going east over Sewingshields crag, my thighs hurting like nobody’s business. Fortunately, Sewingshield’s crag went down gradually and when we got to the bottom the land flattened out. We had a pretty level walk to Chesters, where we stopped to take the bus back to Once Brewed for one more good night there.

Building remains at Housesteads Fort

The next day we spent the whole morning transferring luggage vis-a-vis four different buses from Once Brewed to Hexham, from Hexham to our new base at Corbridge, where we dumped the luggage and took a bus back to Hexham, where we took another bus to Chesters. Chesters is the most beautiful fort on the Wall, being situated right on the river Tyne. It has a marvelous bath house (or the remnants) with hot, warm, and cold rooms, heated hot-water floors, and a latrine trench to the river. The Roman standards for cleanliness were never matched until the 19th century.

    Chesters was a cavalry fort unlike most forts, which were infantry forts. It, like the rest of the Wall, was manned by auxiliaries—in this case, from the Netherlands. These men were highly trained as well, although most of them were cavalry, whereas the legions were of course pure infantry (although normally accompanied by auxiliary cavalry, archers, and slingers.) The Wall itself was built by two legions over a three-year period. The legionnaires were really skilled engineering troops as well as the best infantry the world had ever seen. The nearest legion to the Wall was stationed at York. From Chesters, we hiked about five miles east until we got north of Corbridge and then hiked 2.5 mills south to the bed-and-breakfast where we were staying.

Corbridge Roman ruins

In Corbridge, we had a very interesting talk with the woman running the bed-and-breakfast. She had been a solicitor (British lawyer who could not try cases in the higher courts) but had found the business of conveyancing (changing titles to land) too boring and had gone into the bed-and-breakfast business instead. Her house was extremely beautiful; it had crown molding that covered a good six inches of the ceiling. She was from the Midlands, which meant that her speech was quite intelligible, which was not true for the speech of many of the natives who had a semi-Scottish brogue. However, following the advice of Winston Churchill, when dealing with a native, I always spoke firmly, clearly, and loudly and was appropriately understood.
    Unlike the Irish, I found—with the exception of the people in Carlisle, who seemed to be refugees from a home for the mentally retarded—that the average Englishman was extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and polite. When asking directions, we had people leave their shops and go out the door and point us the way to make sure that we were headed in the right direction. Of course, the differences in terminology are extreme: “to let” means “for rent”; “wc” means bathroom, etc. As Winston Churchill observed, the English and the Americans are “two people divided by a common language.” Computerwise, at least in the hotels, they seem behind the times, but the Newcastle public library computers worked first rate. (Of course, one should take into account that the area we were traveling in was not exactly urban. We probably saw 100 sheep for every person.)

Next time: On to Newcastle
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Copyright © 2013 by James T. Carney

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