Hiking Along Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall crosses Britain at a narrow point, running 80 miles from Solway Firth, near Carlisle on the west coast, to the mouth of the Tyne River, near Newcastle on the west coast.

Today's Britain was Roman Britannia, but only up to the point where the Roman legions could beat back the Picts coming south out of Scotland. The Emperor Hadrian had a wall built coast to coast to fortify his northern border. It took six years, 122-128 AD, and involved the moving of an estimated 2,000,000 cubic yards of earth. This was the largest engineering project undertaken by the Romans.

A ditch (3m deep, 9m wide) was dug immediately in front of the wall, and the earth formed into a rounded hump beyond that. The wall itself was built of stone blocks.

There was a gate every Roman mile (1480 meters, or 0.9196 statue miles). A small fort called a milecastle guarded the gate. Then between each pair of milecastles were two observation turrets — there was an outpost every 494 meters.

The milecastles are numbered from east to west, with the turrets numbers A and B: Milecastle 0, turret 0A, turret 0B, milecastle 1, turret 1A, turret 1B, and so on.

Then there were a series of forts some distance south of the wall and 16 forts right on the wall.

Somewhere in the early 400s the Roman administration faded away and the communities along the wall either became fully self-sustaining or faded away. They hadn't really been all that "Roman" for some time, with the military and administrators recruited locally for many generations.

See the red X on the map for the rough location of the center of the wall. You will, of course, want a real map. Get an Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 map. I used the Explorer OL43 map, titled "Hadrian's Wall; Haltwhistle & Hexham."

Pictures

Here are some pictures from my visit. They're scans of photos taken with a US$ 10 camera — I bought a digital camera soon after this trip.

Some people walk the wall end to end. I just covered the section between turrets 35B and 42A, which is the most scenic central section.

This is the view east from turret 39B.

A view along the cliffs and bluffs around milecastle 39.

The Highshield Crags around turret 38A.

Looking back west along the Highshield Crags.

More elevation changes around milecastle 38.

Vercovicium fort, between milecastles 36 and 37.

Also see its latrines on my Toilets of the World page.

Heading south from Vercovicium fort to Vindolanda fort.

On another day, heading east from where the wall passes north of Haltwhistle, around turret 41B.

Approaching the Windshield Crags around turret 40A.

The Windshield Crags, at turret 40A.

Where I stayed — the Twice Brewed Inn.
Bardon Mill, Hexham,
Northumberland, NE47 7AN
Tel: +44-(0)1434-344534
info@twicebrewedinn.co.uk

To get here, at least in the off season, take a train from Newcastle to Henshaw. From there to Twice Brewed it's a walk of about 3.5 kilometers with about a 100 meter elevation climb.

	These 1:50,000 scale maps are from the very useful UK Ordnance Survey site. Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland. They show from west to east the extent of the wall that I walked. You will find the 1:25,000 map more useful when hiking along the wall. The maps are links, click on them for full-sized versions.