Our Walk Along Hadrian's Wall Path

“Bright young sun, it looks like the morning's come And it's all come so easy like the heavens are wishing me well And those dawning eyes brought forth my own sunrise Well it's been a long time since the beat of my heart was a friend Oh well, It's been a long time since I felt I was breathing again”   Roo Panes, Home from Home   A Mistake En Route   Having now completed Wainwright’s Coast to Coast, the Pennine Way, West Highland Way, Great Glen Way and finally Hadrian’s Wall Path, we are utterly exhausted... and admittedly a great deal thinner than when we began.  Ultimately, it was too long a stretch completed in too short a time to be fully appreciated while on the trail.  Each trail – especially the final three- deserved more space and time than we were able or willing to give them.  Each landscape, community, and regional history asked for attention, but by the end, we were moving more by momentum and routine than out of curiosity or the ability to refl...

“To visit a country without exploring it’s history is like going to a 3D movie and not wearing glasses.” Rick Steves Why We Failed Hiking Hadrian’s Wall When we reached Hadrian’s Wall Path, we thought we knew what we were doing. By then, we had already crossed and trekked Britain repeatedly on foot - coast to coast, ridge to ridge, glen to glen. We were in shape, experienced, and accustomed to the routines of long days on the trail. We knew how to carry our packs, deal with the weather, deal with uncertain conditions, and keep moving when things became challenging And yet, despite completing the full distance from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, we left Hadrian’s Wall with the distinct feeling that we had failed to succeed. Not because we lacked strength. Not because the walking or the terrain overwhelmed us. Not because we gave up - though perhaps we should have. Instead, this feeling arose because we did not give the Wall or the regions we walked through what they required most ...

“Empire grows until it meets the limits imposed by nature.” Pliny the Elder, Natural History   Fading of the Empire   As we moved further west along Hadrian’s Wall - whether structurally in evidence or simply present in our minds as we walked, had begun to disappear once again.     Of course, by then we already knew that walking Hadrian’s Wall does not mean following a continuous structure or ruin from coast to coast. Much of the Wall has vanished - been dismantled, repurposed, absorbed into roads, churches, villages, and cities. What remains are fragments - foundations, ditches, turrets, forts, milecastles, and the occasional stretch of stone.   In many ways, to trek along the modern national trail is to imagine Hadrian’s Wall rather than explicitly follow the structure itself.   Early in the walk, Rome had seemed to be everywhere. At Wallsend, there were baths, fort foundations, statues, and the imagined eastern gateway to the frontier. Across Northumber...