Hadrian's Wall, Part II (Newcastle to Corbridge)

 

 Intro
Having spent our first day wandering around Newcastle and getting the train everywhere we finally set off on the actual hike. Our plan today was to get to Corbridge where we had a bed & breakfast reserved for the night. I looked it up on Google Maps and it said that the entire journey would cover about fifteen miles, a long but not impossible stretch. Since there was basically nothing to see for this part of the journey (and certainly no stretches of wall) this didn't seem like a bad idea at the time. Do the serious walking on the days when there were few places to stop at and save the slow days for areas where there was a lot to see. There were only two problems. First, the distance calculation was based on road miles in a direct line to our destination. Google Maps doesn't include walking paths in its directions. I figured that the actual distance would be less than the road miles since the path could cut corners which roads would have to circle around. Boy was I wrong. The trail heads along the river for a while, but then it goes sharply north up through Heddon and then keeps going along a north-westerly direction whereas Corbridge is right on the river about two miles south of the wall. So our strenuous fifteen mile hike turned into a draining twenty mile slog that took up the entirety of the day. Second, I didn't factor in the terrain. Google Maps doesn't show the terrain and while Google Earth does it's very hard to get an idea from it of just how steep it really is. The hills weren't too bad (at least today) but once the trail goes off road all time calculations get thrown off. I'm used to hiking wilderness trails or along roads, not cutting across fields and climbing over fences. Progress is slow and painful, and it doesn't help when you're tired from having walked ten miles already and then up a steep hill. By the time we arrived at Corbridge at about 9 PM we were too tired to move.

Thebes

Thebes (Thiva) is a decent sized town in Boeotia. This was one of the most important Mycenaean cities from Greek legend. Oedipus was king of Thebes as were Cadmus and Pentheius. The god Dionysus was born here. The city was sacked by the Seven Against Thebes just before the Trojan War which is why none of their heroes showed up. The modern city hasn't really got much to recommend it. We never got out of our car on account of it being a death trap. The traffic patter here was really dreadful and we nearly got hit twice, which is twice more than in the rest of Greece. From what we saw there wasn't much here. There's the Cadmeion which was the citadel on the the hill where palace used to be but it's really nothing but a pile of rocks at this point. There are a few other sites around the city but they're not much. The bus stops here so if you get a bus to or from Athens you can see it out your window.

Olympia

COMING SOON

 

Pompeii

COMING SOON

Marine Gate

Nîmes

COMING SOON
Les Grands Jeux Romains à Nîmes

Jerusalem

COMING SOON

Jerusalem is amazing. Full stop. I think that it is the single most amazing place that I have ever been. It certainly gives Petra a run for its money. While Petra is all about the glory of the desert and the abandoned monuments, Jerusalem is very much a living city. There is nowhere I've been that can compare to it. And I got to spend most of a week there. Yes!

Petra

 

 What can I say about Petra? Everyone must go there. It is likely the most beautiful place on the planet. It says a lot that once you get past the flashy stuff at the beginning it still finds ways to impress. For those who don't know this is where they filmed the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was the resting place of the Holy Grail at the end of the Canyon of the Crescent Moon. There's a reason they used this site. It is the most impressive entrance that one can get to a city. More on that when I get there.

Jerash

Having arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday I began to work out my plans for the trip. I had a list of places that I wanted to see but I had kept my schedule intentionally free. That was a good thing because the Middle East is a very religious place (Surprise Surprise). Strangely enough, Israel seems to be more religious than its immediate neighbors. It has a hint of theocracy about it and what that means in practical terms is that everything shuts down on the Sabbath. Most businesses including many restaurants and stores are included in this, as well as all the buses and museums. So being in Israel on a Saturday is pretty dull.The Christian, Armenian, and Arab quarters of the Old City (where I was staying) didn't all keep to this but it would have seriously hampered my movements to remain. So I took my trip across the border to Jordan a little sooner than planned. While I did get a chance to see a bit of Jerusalem that night I'm leaving that 'till the Jerusalem section later because I saw most of the city during the day after I got back from Jordan.

Getting there wasn't as easy as I'd have liked. First of the there are three border crossings to Jordan. The Sheikh Hussein one is in the north below the Sea of Galilee and the Eilat/Aqaba one is at the far south border of both countries. The third one is the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge which is near Jericho just north of the Deas Sea and is a real oddity for several reasons. Firstly they don't issue visas which means that you have to get one from the Jordanian embassy in advance. Second, it's in occupied Palestine which means that there is a mass of legal loopholes concerning it. For example, as far as Jordan is concerned people using the bridge are going into Palestine and not Israel which is good for all those people who don't want an Israeli stamp on their passport (ie. if they're traveling into any other country in the area apart from Egypt. Those are the only states that recognize Israel as a nation). Israel doesn't see things that way but are content to let in the visitors using that loophole provided that they go through a typically rigorous security check. The other strange thing about the border is that you can't take your vehicle across. That wasn't a problem for me since I was taking buses, but it must be annoying for anyone else. Fortunately, I was aiming for the Sheikh Hussein crossing in the north. My plan was to make a 2-3 day trip of it starting in the north and working my way down to the Aqaba crossing.

Crossing borders in the Middle East (or at least Israel) is a long and sometimes complicated procedure. Anyone who doesn't realize that Israel has security concerns should really not be visiting since they are probably suffering from a severe brain injury. The Sheikh Hussein Crossing consists of two different checkpoints and about a mile of no-man's land in between. You go through the Israeli side, get your passport stamped to certify you're exiting the country, pay the visa fee, and then you pay for a bus to go to the other side of the border. Once there the Jordanian authorities will ask you the same questions and charge for them to stamp your passport. They do issue visas on the spot, but the whole process takes about an hour and a half to two hours. Unfortunately for me that meant I missed one of the main attractions at my first stop, Jarash.

Avebury

Avebury may make me change my mind about Neolithic sites. It was a beautiful town. We came there for lunch and the pub gave us a limited choice of food in order to accommodate all of us. The pub has a well that supposedly contains the body of a murder victim. You'd be surprised how many wells seem to have those but this one was built right into the pub and served as a table.On the way in we passed a giant mound that is apparently the biggest Neolithic monument in Europe. It's just a big mound of earth but it is impressive to consider its scale.

Stonehenge

Stonehenge. What is there left to say about Stonehenge? I don't like it. Frankly, it's just a pile of rocks in between two motorways. I know that there are people who'd get all up in arms over that but it's just not my thing. Neolithic remains don't interest me, which is a shame really because that's what the rest of the trip was.

Getting to Stonehenge is real easy. It's located right at the junction of two highways. You don't even need to get out of your car, you can just look out the window as you drive by and see as much of them as I would want to. If you do go in for a visit you take the right fork (if you're coming from London) and there is a parking lot and small visitor centre there. There is a fee to get in, though I don't know how much, and they give you audio guides to help you walk around the circle. You can't go into the circle you just walk around the outside. They do let certain people in on rare occasions. Those crazy new age druids from Glastonbury demanded to be let in here because this is an ancient druidic holy site. Never mind that the henge predates the druids by at least 2000 years, they know better than those pesky archaeologists what this site was used for. Turns out it's for staring at the moon and chanting. How disappointing. On a slightly more realistic note Doctor Who came here last season. Somehow all those echo surveys that they make of the ground failed to pick up the giant cavern underneath the stones that the Doctor went in. Probably an oversight on their part. Anyways, to get to the henge from the visitor centre you go under the highway and a set of stairs will take you past some rather nice paintings of the henge people and up to the henge itself. Then you do a circle round the thing and come back and you can say you've done it. Hooray! Moving on...

Delphi

Delphi is possibly the most gorgeous spot in Greece. It is not surprising that the Greeks thought this place the most holy on earth. Delphi is most famous for having the Delphic oracle, and indeed most of the remains are from the temple. I don't believe that there was much else going for the town apart from its temple. It's located high in the mountains along narrow ledges and has very little in the way of natural resources or farmland. Just getting there is a treat as the road goes through mountain ranges and valleys and various little villages. It must have required a truly extraordinary effort to get here in ancient times.

Athens

Athens has some really wonderful sights and some really seedy areas. I find that a lot of foreign cities are like that, but what separates Athens (and Greece) is how difficult it is to tell when you're passing from one to the other. The difference between a nice safe section and a dangerous section can often be only a few feet. First off, Greek cities look really run down. Greeks don't put as much effort into maintaining cities as the Americans and British do. Even street cleaning and trash disposal is largely neglected. Areas like the Parthenon are different because of the number of tourists visiting but even there you can expect to see trash lying around on the ground. I don't think that this is a money issue. Even the areas that have money don't look fancy. Presentation is not a strong feature of Greek culture. It just isn't a big deal for them. While it becomes easier to tell the areas apart after spending some time there you should still expect to see druggies passed out on the street, homeless people, and random gangs of people wandering the streets. At least until you figure out which areas to avoid. Generally, the areas around the Acropolis are pretty safe but if you go north too far past Omonia Square you're on your own. Again, the lack of care means that all Athens looks pretty seedy, but unless you stay in your hotel room you're gonna have to face it sooner or later.