Great wall, great walk

We’ve just walked Hadrian’s wall – our first long-distance walk. We decided to walk West to East, mainly because we wanted to end up in Newcastle to visit friends, but also so the prevailing wind and any associated rain would be behind us. We observed about 80% of people chose to walk it the other way.

But we had beautiful sunshine for most of our nine days. One rest day on our middle day, allowed us to spend a delightful day visiting the Vindolanda museum, and the Sill visitor centre. The day either side at Steel Rigg are the best days for viewing both the wall and the beautiful views of the dramatic countryside.

We booked our accommodation through one of the many walking companies that provide the service, only needing to carry what we wanted during each day’s walk. We met a few who had carried everything on their back and camped they certainly looked more tired than us!

One thing we hadn’t considered was who we would meet – people from all over the world, particularly the US and Canada, and everybody was so friendly. We also met one couple and an American walking our way, and although on slightly different schedules we kept meeting up, updating each other on the events and places we visited, and on one great day all five of us walked together. We all swapped Emails and have remained in contact, now all firm friends. Would we walk it again? Definitely, if we ran out of other places to walk, but that looks unlikely: we are already planning our next walk on the train home. We’d never have done any of this has Country Walking not come into our lives!