Day 4: Walking the Wall
It was one of the warmest days yet of summer, although here in the north that means 23 degrees. We were very glad by the end of the day to have remembered both shorts and sunscreen, because it was a hot walk, especially once we got into the Northumberland National Park and the topography took a change for the very varied.
Almost from the beginning of the day, we were on the wall and mostly out in the countryside, away from the roads, We were sorry to say good-bye to Sue and Dick, who have the most beautiful B and B we have every stayed at, and Humshaugh, which is a perfect village (with an award-winning shop run by volunteers). The pub is up there with our idea of the perfect English pub, on a small scale – great food and atmosphere, with a host and barmaid who knew what they were doing, and a great pale ale with a title made for me: “Bitter and Twisted”. They all seem to look on the impending completion of the two small estates (40 houses) with trepidation, not because the riff-raff would arrive, but because the houses, while they will fit in with the local architecture, will be too expensive for anyone except commuters to Hexham and Newcastle.
If the street had not been tarred (not even macadamised!), little would have changed since the 1850s. There was even a dower house! The Methodist chapel was also from that period, so something must have been happening at the time to bring prosperity to the area. Of course, Humshaugh later became famous as the site of the first Scout Camp, but you can look that up yourself!
The overwhelming memory of today is shit, if only because so much remains on our boots and fill the air in our little room at the B and B at Twice Brewed. The morning was in cow country, and as stiles are often under trees and cows like gathering under trees at night, it was often a case of sloshing through an unmentionable liquid ooze! Once out of the cows and into the uplands, it was sheep, almost as bad and harder to avoid. I look at my Scarpas, which are amazing at coping with all terrains, and wonder if the designers had manure in the project brief!
The sheer energy expended on the Wall over a very long period becomes clear as you walk into the uplands. What’s become clear as we’ve looked and read is that frontier had no Wall until 122 CE, and then the Hadrianic construction with all the effort on milecastles and camps, later abandoned for the Antonine frontier in Scotland, and the fortified anew nearly a century later. The solders of the fourth century would have been walking walls that in places were two centuries old. There doesn’t seem to be a typical era or typical soldier (and we’re coming to realise that the garrisons were not the legionaries, but auxiliares from Belgium, Spain and elsewhere). All religions seem represented, but Mithras seems important to the soldiers, as at the Cavalry fort at Brocolitia.
The Wall started to swing up and down in the hilly terrain heading towards Swingshield Crags. It was hard walking, but not unpleasant, but the forecast spoke of thunderstorms, so we were trying to keep the time down and consequently, getting tired. We stopped for lunch in an idyllic sport with some small areas clear of sheep shit and watched the clouds move over the loch below.
We made a mistake and took the low road north of the crags, which turned out to be as hard as following the line of the Wall, but both ways took us to Housesteads Fort, which we had visited in the depths of winter 18 months ago. It is a dramatic position and it is amazing approaching it from below and north of the wall, but by this stage the legs were tiring and we had done more tha 18 km of hill country, so we pressed on after the briefest of looks. Twice Brewed and Steel Rigg could not come soon enough. The country, even though the sky was overcast, was dramatic, but so was our need to find the end of the trip!
We walked down the road, past the very prosperous-looking pub, noted the road to VIndolanda for tomorrow, and found Vallum Lodge. As an aside, this place had been hammered by a couple of Americans on TripAdvisor, but the descriptions of the place and the owners couldn’t be further from the truth. Now, rest and sleep and a day of archeology for the morrow.
