purplecat

Chesters is probably the most impressive of the Hadrian's Wall forts simply because it has walls that are in many places a good deal higher than the foot or so you see elsewhere.



A store room.






The bath house complex by the river is particularly impressive.


I think this is the hot steam room - presumably a bit like a sauna.


These were the lockers where you put your clothes before entering the complex.

Housteads main claim to fame as a wall fort is the excellent preservation of its latrines. However, in celebration of 1900 years of Hadrian's Wall it had acquired a controversial art installation in the form of a colourful gatehouse decorated with comments from workshop sessions on the Wall. B. and I quite liked it but could see that if this was your only visit to Housteads you might not have wanted the whole thing dominated by a mock gatehouse.






This is the view from up within the gate house.


The latrines.

Birdoswald was our first fort on the walk. We'd skipped viewing it last time because we reached it at the absolute low point in our walk, where it looked like B's knees were going to give out, I had terrible blisters and when we stopped in the tea room they gave us squirty cream with our scones and jam.

The tea room and visitor centre had been renovated in the intervening years (though we didn't risk the scones). There was a nice short film about Hadrian's wall as well as Lego models of turrets, milecastles, curtain wall and a Roman Bridge together with (albeit sketchy) instructions. I've photographed these, though I haven't yet built Hadrian's wall myself.



To be honest, the forts later in the walk have more to see, but we could still follow the outline of the fort's walls.


What Birdoswald does have is a 18th/19th century farmhouse (complete with mock tower) in the middle of it. I thought it was a youth hostel and had looking into booking us a night there, but it turned out to be more a holiday house kind of thing - easy enough to book if there are 10 of you wanting to stay for a week - less attractive if it is two of you wanting to stay for the night.


I think this was supposed to be some kind of Roman instrument. It was located at the far entrance of the fort.

Having spent a week in Orkney, B and I then spent a week walking Hadrian's Wall in the opposite direction to the one we took in 2017, taking an extra day and skipping the Newcastle suburbs. Day 1 we walked from Boness on Solway to Carlisle. Boness had struck us as rather run down when we visited in 2017, but this time it felt more like a village in the process of gentrification - it had acquired an extra restaurant and cafe, and a smattering of smart cars. It was the tail end of a heat wave and while neither of us dehydrated we both drank a lot of water once we got to our hotel in Carlisle. The walk itself was rather dull. In 2017 the Solway Firth came at the end of a long day of walking and had a certain grandeur under overcast skies. At the start of a walk in the blazing sunshine the stretch of the walk alongside it seemed shorter and less significant. This part of the walk is mostly fields and villages - charming in its way but 17 miles of it was plenty. At Carlisle we got to walk along the river which we'd been unable to do in 2017 because it was under repair following floods.



Anyway, here is B. at the very start of the walk.


Day 2 was much the same. We were walking a shorter distance so spent the morning sight-seeing in Carlisle (something we had skipped previously since we were walking 24 miles in one day and had no time) and then walked to Walton-on-the-Wall - setting quite a fast pace since rain was forecast late afternoon (though in the event it didn't arrive until into the night). The landscape was much the same - fields and villages and we somehow missed our first section of wall. At Walton we stayed in a bunkhouse with a donkey.

Every Roman mile along Hadrian's Wall, there was a milecastle. Our walk gradually came to be measured by which milecastles we were between even though no traces of the one's at either end exist and, in some cases, their location is purely speculative. Still we saw quite a few in the middle.

( Under the Cut )

I've no pictures from last week so have another from the week before. This is the approach to Housesteads fort from the East. Imagine what that must have been like when both wall and fort walls were more than a couple of feet high!

24 miles. My feet ache terribly however, thanks to the advice of the wonderful fififolle and a small souvenir shop in the Northumberland National Park, they are at least encased in Compseed Plasters. B. was initially deeply sceptical about these, but since one has remained glued to the ball of my foot all day today, he has come around.

No wall to be seen, though there were occasional earthworks, but once we had crossed the M6 and reached Carlisle (which B. keeps referring to as Cardiff), the walk was mostly dominated by the Solway Firth, including the little faux Roman hut at the end of the walk in which you could get the final stamp in your "passport".

11 miles + a 3.5 mile detour to Vindolanda. The feet are much better, though our legs are becoming increasingly stiff. In the above B. can be seen admiring the latrines at Housesteads (particularly impressed by the rainwater sluicing mechanism) and approaching Sycamore Gap star (or so the Internet informs us) of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves though neither of us recalls the film clearly enough to be certain - I'm certainly not certain it starred in the infamous Dover to Nottingham via Hadrian's Wall scene.