Tuesday Voice: Walk of Hadrian’s Wall—Part 3

Last of the wall near Newcastle
[click to enlarge]

On to Newcastle

By James T. Carney

[Sequel to “From disasters onward”]

Anyway, when we got to Newcastle, we dumped our stuff in the hotel and caught the one bus (a day) which would take us to the section of the Wall where we had left off the previous day. Catching this bus was not easy because the woman in the hotel directed us to the wrong stop and the bus station operator doubted our ability to make it to the train station, where the bus we wanted would leave in the 15 minutes we had. Stonewall Jackson’s foot cavalry could not have moved faster and we caught the bus with some time to spare. This day was a rather easy hike and not terribly interesting except that my USS Border Patrol cap, which my son Dan had given me and which I was wearing, attracted the attention of three Americans—two of whom were from Arizona and worked for what was the Immigration and Naturalization Service. I thought it was appropriate to wear a Border Patrol hat because we were walking in the footsteps of the first Anglo-Saxon Border Patrol.
    Most people walk the Wall east to west. We walked the Wall the opposite way because I thought in general it would be easier to do it with the wind at our back. We met a lot of people hiking the opposite way from us but we found almost no one in the section we were in this day or the section we were in the next, which raised the question in my mind as to how many people hiked the length of the Wall. I never found an answer to this.

In all events, we arrived at Heddon-on-the-Wall at the end of Thursday. Heddon-on-the-Wall has the last stretch of the visible wall before Wallsend.
    We had amazingly good weather luck throughout the whole trip. It did start to rain, though, just as we got to Heddon-on-the-Wall, which was our goal for the day, so we just caught the bus to Newcastle. In retrospect, we should have buried ourselves in the local pub there and stayed dry because we got drenched upon arriving in Newcastle. The drains had backed up and the streets became flooded. We did not find any really good pubs in Newcastle (and wandered by mistake into a gay pub, which we quickly evacuated) and ended up finding a pizza joint and eating pizza.

The next day we took the bus back to Heddon-on-the-Wall and started our walk. We had not had any breakfast, so some helpful soul directed us to the local coffee shop, which made us coffee (Rich had a hard time moving without coffee in the morning). The woman made us sandwiches for lunch. I had a BLT, forgetting that British bacon was ham and not bacon, but it was still good. Someone had tied their dog outside and the poor dog looked mournfully at everyone going by. The British seemed devoted to dogs, given the number of them that we saw being walked by their owners. We saw only one cat—a black one. Rich was concerned that it would bring bad luck, but I assuaged his concern by pointing out that the cat had not crossed our path.

At this point we were 12 Roman miles from Wallsend. However, the course of the Wall led straight through the middle of Newcastle along urban roads. The Wall path (which was set up in the years that have passed since Jim and I made our trip) led down to the River Tyne and along the river before it cut up to Wallsend, which was perhaps a quarter of the mile from the River. Rich and I elected to follow the path as opposed to the actual course of the Wall because it seemed more interesting and because our feet were complaining at the prospect of walking along hard sidewalks.

Wallsend—the last fort

    After about two miles, we hit the River Tyne and walked along it to the site of a famous battle in the so-called Bishops’ Wars—a precursor to the English Civil War—in which the forces of Charles I were soundly defeated by a Scottish army fighting to Protestantize the Church of Scotland (which was the Anglican established church in Scotland after the Union with England in 1607). From there we went along the banks of the Tyne to the center of Newcastle, which was an extremely industrialized city in the 19th and 20th centuries, with steel-making and ship-building being the key industries. Indeed, ship-building still remains a key industry. It was like going down the Monongahela and seeing the remnants of the steel industry.
    As we got closer to the center of Newcastle, we saw redevelopment in the form of many houses and apartment complexes as well as many office buildings. We are starting to see the same type of redevelopment in Pittsburgh, but Newcastle seemed to be in advance of Pittsburgh. Of course, another way that the British are way in advance of Americans is the system of rail and bus transport. While one can argue that Britain is a smaller country and public transit works better, their rail system makes our Atlantic coast rail system (where distances are short) look like the disaster it is.
    Although we had traveled only eight Roman miles, in terms of the length of the Wall, we had hiked more like 12 on the path and we called it quits when we got to the center of Newcastle and our hotel, leaving the last four Roman miles to the next and final day.

Saturday we stumbled forth and walked down to where we had left off on the River Tyne and headed for Wallsend. For a short while, we were still on the redeveloped side of the river, but soon we hit the more industrialized sector. We managed to lose the path at one point and just walked along the street that ran parallel to the Wall until we were almost at Wallsend. Finally, someone directed us back to the path and we went on it. As we approached Wallsend, we met one Roman Legionnaire in full uniform who warned us that following him were three Micks.

Last legionnaire

We found them and inquired where they were from. The answered Cork—the second largest city in Ireland, which looks like McKeesport on a rainy day. They were just starting out on the Wall path so we did not delay them since they had a long way to go. (They did look sober at least. I doubt if they remained so.)
    We finally reached Wallsend (Segendum). The only disappointing thing about that was that the part of the Wall between the fort and the river was not travelable and the Wall really ended on the Tyne’s bank. (We were probably another five miles from the North Sea where the Wall ended. The Romans had a naval base at South Shields on the North Sea that covered any attempts to cross the Tyne or the Sea by boat.) We explored the museum at the fort, which was quite interesting. However, the remnants of the fort were not very visible, although it did have a reconstructed bathhouse built to model the bathhouse at Chesters.

Reconstructed bathhouse at Wallsend fort

We took a bus back to Newcastle Centre, rescued our bags from the hotel, walked to Central Station, took the train to Manchester, stayed overnight in a hotel, and took a very slow plane back to the U.S.
    Despite all the hassles, this was a wonderful trip, and both Rich and I had a great time. Although we had only two days going through strenuous country, hiking 8-10 miles a day for ten days represents a minor challenge—the path was longer than the wall itself. Fortunately, we had both gotten ourselves in decent physical shape for the trip. It’ll be something to tell our grandchildren about—and mighty bored will they be after hearing it.

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The following photos were not available from Mr. Carney in time for publication with Part 1 (first three photos) and Part 2:

Beginning of the trip

First sight of the wall outside of Walton

River Eden outside of Carlisle

Along the crags

Chesters Fort

Poltross Mile Castle

Rich on the crags

Rich outside a turret on section of wall after the crags

The crags and the sycamore tree seen in the movie Robin Hood

View from the east looking at the crags

View of the wall after the crags

Wall down to River Irthing

Wall just before Birdswold fort

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Copyright © 2013 by James T. Carney

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