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.
Condercum (Benwell Hill)
Gate
We started off the day in Benwell where our hotel for the night was. Benwell is a suburb of Newcastle and it had the farthest west hotel I could find. It was also only about half a mile away from the next of the Hadrian's Wall forts. This fort is particularly special because of where it is located. The fort of Condercum is now a housing complex with most of the fort completely obliterated by new foundations. There are two places however where the original fort remains. The first of these is the south gate, or rather the bridge crossing it. All of the forts would have followed the same basic layout which featured the various buildings laid out to a standard patter enclosed behind a wall which was further protected by a
vallum, or ditch. This ditch would have run around the entire length of the fort and helped serve to keep intruders away. But of course, the Romans did need to get into and out of the fort from time to time so they had bridges built over the
vallum at all of the gates. This is the only one that survives.
What you're looking at is pretty basic. The recessed area is the
vallum while the stone bit in the middle is the bridge over it. The two stones on either side of the bridge would have held a gate blocking easy access across. People could still have gone around, but the
vallum would have been about twice as deep as it is now so it would have slowed them down considerably. This entire site is a gated off area at the bottom of a row of houses. It features the most amusing sign on the trail which says, "If the gate is locked please obtain the key from 26 Denhill Park." I've never seen anything quite like that.
Temple
The second ancient site in Benwell is located up the road and slightly to the east. This is a temple to the god Antenociticus, either a local god or one imported by the Germanic troops stationed here. It was located outside the ancient fort and is now located in the middle of a housing complex. The last one was at least at the bottom of a row where it seemed almost natural to have an empty area. This one is right in the middle of a row of houses. It's hard to express how surreal this place is. To get a better idea of where these actually are in context look at the map below. The
vallum crossing is at the bottom of the row of houses in Denhill Park on the lower left. The temple is the empty lot at the top right corner of Broomridge Ave. To find Roman ruins in such a residential area is quite a surprise.
The altars that appear
in situ here are actually copies of the ones found on the site. Since there's no protection for this temple apart from an unlocked gate it is only an obvious security feature to prevent their theft.
The first part of the trail doesn't follow the wall at all. It follows the river Tyne. The wall would have been somewhere to the north of here on as much of a height as they could find. Fortunately the view of the river is quite nice and peaceful. The picture above was taken on Newburn Bridge and is only a few hundred yards from a small field which commemorates the battle of Newburn during the English Civil War. The Romans weren't the only people who did things here!
The beginning of the trail is really poorly marked. You're supposed to follow the acorns, but this is an area with many paths and the acorns aren't always easy to spot. When a trail splits which way do you go? I planned ahead and had the entire path laid out on my phone using GPS and a map I downloaded from the Trailblazer's Guide to the Hadrian's Wall Path. Free advertising I suppose, but it worked well for us. While the path may be hard to spot it's quite hard to get too lost. As long as you have the river on your left you just need to make sure that you turn right towards Heddon when you hit the golf course.
Heddon-on-the-Wall is a lovely place to stop for lunch. The town is very old fashioned and has a number of places to stay. Depending on where you start from Heddon may be an excellent place to stop for the night as it's one of the few sleeping areas that are actually along the path of the trail. Actually, you'd be as well off starting in Heddon since there isn't really anything much before it.
From Heddon onwards the trail sticks pretty close to the wall, or rather the area where the wall
would have been. There isn't much left at this stage so it's basically a nice country walk with the occasional stop.
Vindobala (Rudchester)
As you walk along the trail you come to a sign by an old abandoned farmhouse saying
Rudchester Fort. That's really the only evidence you have that this fort exists. Judging from old pictures there was more to this site when it was excavated about fifty years ago, but all of that is under grass now. I don't know why they don't clear it away and open it to tourists, but maybe they don't feel there will be enough visitors to make it worthwhile.
There is really truly nothing here. It's an empty field. Nothing else to see. They do have a sign which shows a reconstruction as well as a few pictures from the last excavation in 1924. It seems that there is something actually under here and it's unfortunate that they haven't bothered to reveal it. I guess it's not considered enough of a tourist draw. This is also the first time that you will really see mention of the Military Road. This is the road that parallels the wall for most of its journey. In this case and several others it actually cuts through the middle of the fort itself as you can see in the map below. The fort is the rectangular shape on either side of the road. This road was built by General Wade in 1752 during a period of Anglo-Scottish conflict out of stones taken from the wall. Wade's destructive work is generally reviled by archaeologists and by many antiquarians at the time.
Apart from the brief stretches of wall in Heddon the first time you really get to see any evidence of the wall is when you get to walk inside the
Vallum. The
Vallum (Latin for wall. V's were pronounced W) is the modern name for the ditch (real name
fossa) that the Romans built on the south side of the wall. This is pretty much unheard of in Roman defense lines since the big ditch is usually on the opposite side to keep the enemy out. That they built one to the south shows how uncertain they were of the inhabitants of that region. The wall isn't after all marking a clear ethnic division. The same tribes were living on both sides of the wall, now separated artificially. There is a ditch on the north as well but it hasn't survived as well as the
Vallum has.
On the way we came across Whittledene Reservoir, which was a nice little place with a big sign and lots of birds.
For most of the first stretch of the walk you're surrounded by fields. Mostly hay and cow fields, this leads to some beautiful vistas, especially at sunset.
It was already getting quite dark when we reached Halton Shields. This is a fairly distinctive looking section with a copse of trees surrounding the road. We took a breather here while my companion drilled the first of my Italian lessons in.
Sono stanco: I'm tired. And at this point we could barely stand. But we still had two miles to go.
To the south you could see a very clear section of the
Vallum in the middle of the cowfields. This is looking towards Corbridge, but not nearly close enough for our comfort! That's where our B&B was. So we set off again.
Hunnum (Halton Chesters)
pic
Halton Chesters is probably the worst preserved of all the forts, saving perhaps the ones that have been built over to make Newcastle and Carlisle. There is nothing here. Wade's military way goes right through the center of it and even on a satellite view there is nothing surviving to the north. In what was the center of the fort is a gate for the road leading to Halton and eventually Corbridge. It was now about 8:00 and getting dark fast. It was only a mile and a half to Corbridge as the crow flies, but the road takes over two miles. We got into town around 9:00 and managed to find a grocery store that was still open and selling pre-cooked food. Then we went to our B&B (which was nice enough to wait up for us) and collapsed on the beds. And thus ended our first day on the trail.
Day's Journey
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