So the train is booked for Monday 18th; hotels and meals are booked; boots are ready. Only a few days to go till the Wee Wall Walk begins. Exciting times!
So today began with a taxi ride to Bowness on Solway where the walk starts - then we had to walk the 15 miles back to Carlisle plus another mile or so back to our B&B. On the way we walked alongside the Solway Firth (having carefully checked the tide tables as the road sometimes floods). We saw some sheep who seemed convinced they were alpacas; we had a great lunch at the Greyhound pub in Burgh-by-Sands (interesting fact - this is the place where King Edward I - known as Longshanks - died) (the town not the pub). The path continued alongside the River Eden, going through an underpass (which looked more like the canals in the centre of Birmingham) to cross the Carlisle Northern By Pass. Fortunately there was a route to scramble through without getting our feet wet! And one for the railway buffs - on the way into Carlisle we passed the bridge which used to take the Waverley Line over the Eden. Two very tired walkers this evening with icepacks on Paul's ankle and Kate's kne...
As we left the hotel this morning we met the Hadrian’s Haul guy who has been moving our bags from place to place in his rather funky van… ….before crossing the river to look back at the hotel where we had stayed – such a wonderful setting! Then on, up the hill on the far side of the river valley, and some wonderful views in the morning sunshine. We didn’t see much of the Wall today (most of it was reduced to rubble to provide the hardcore for a road built along its route in the mid 1700s). However, one section which has survived shows that even the Romans sometimes changed their spec to cut costs – the initial width of the Wall was around 10 feet wide, but from this point onwards it was reduced to around 8 feet. You can see it in the photo below. A little further on we passed a tiny church dedicated to St Oswald at Heavenfield. This was the site where Oswald, the heir to the Northumbrian throne, defeated the Mercian king Penda, and reunited the two halves of Northum...
After a wonderful evening meal, a comfortable bed and a fine breakfast we are ready for the final stage. A taxi takes us back to the Three Tuns Pub in Heddon on the Wall for us to resume the walk. We begin by seeing a surprisingly long section of surviving wall remains – we are told this is the last section we will see on our walk and no one is quite sure why it hasn’t been plundered over the years. Clearly it’s well known as we had to wait for a coachload of overseas tourists to move before we could get the photo below. In fact there was one more tiny section still to be found - but that was still 16 miles away. Our route took us through the village of Heddon – very much a transition village between rural Northumberland and the ever advancing urban sprawl of Newcastle – and down to the banks of the Tyne. The path continued on a greenway (the trackbed of an old railway line) towards the city centre. Along the way we met two ladies walking their dog who spoke (amongst other things...
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