After two days relaxing I left Alne under a blue and cloudless sky. My journey was the reverse of the route from two days earlier with its mix of quiet lanes and tracks through countryside. Today though I also passed through the landscaped grounds of Beningbrough Hall cycling an empty access drive through parkland that was dotted with trees and, near my exit, the eponymous Hall, a classical frontage of red brick and white stone dappled in the morning shadow of its avenue of trees.
An hour on the train and I was in Newcastle where a short ride through city roads took me to the north bank of the Tyne and a ride along the embankment, heading towards the iconic Tyne bridges silhouetted against blue in the near distance. The river was a stream of listless, brown muddy water sitting between sloping, brown muddy banks, glistening moist in the sun and exposed by the low tide. I cycled alongside the empty and seemingly lifeless waters - a far cry from the busyness that would have helped create this city - weaving my way through the coffee drinkers and walkers with whom I shared the smooth embankment path. Shops and modern offices gave way to quiet roads feeding utilitarian industrial buildings alongside the river as I headed away from the city centre and towards the coast. A section on old rail line had a more rural feel, running through grassland and trees, but which in reality were only narrow strips of nature that obscured views of the river and heavy suburbia that I knew lay beyond.
After six miles the path opened out and I reached my first stop for the day, the Segedunum Roman Fort museum. It is obvious as you pass its perimeter fencing, its futuristic but time-faded tower, built to provide views over the archeological site, looking incongruous amid its surroundings. The remains of the fort are now trapped between a small area of flattened industrial wasteland alongside the Tyne and the parallel streets of terraced houses on the outer edges of residential Wallsend but when built it sat alongside the river and represented the end of the wall in the east.
I spent time in the museum. The fort is apparently the most thoroughly excavated of those along the wall although there is little to see above ground other than the footprint of the fort foundations on the grass. I viewed the site from the tower and wandered the remains of the fort before continuing my ride east towards my accommodation for the night and the start of my ride tomorrow.
So far I had avoided busy roads but that was soon to change as my semi-rural path ended and I found myself riding on fast roads and circumnavigating roundabouts further from the river, staying on them longer than necessary as I lost the route for a while. Back on track, I was soon dropping back down to the river and the platform for the ferry that would allow me to cross from North to South Shields. A fifteen minute wait, then a short trip on the small passenger ferry took me to the south bank of the Tyne. It was only a short road ride to the remains of the Arbiea Roman fort, built to supply the wall and guard the mouth of the Tyne and now a large square patch of archeology surrounded on all sides by terraced housing. More importantly for me, it is the starting point of the Hadrian Cycleway and only a stone's throw from my accommodation for the night.
I visited the tiny fort museum and then wandered around the grounds. With the exception of a reconstruction gatehouse and Commanding Officer's house, like Segedumum south of the river, the remaining structure consists for the most part of footprints of original buildings defined by the foundations. Despite what appeared - to my uninformed mind at least - as limited archeology the descriptions of the roles of the buildings, their scale and their number gave a sense of what once had been: a large supply depot integral to the functioning of Hadrian’s Wall and home to some six hundred soldiers.
I left the fort and headed into the rows of terraced house that surrounded the site; my bed and breakfast was only a few streets away. With my gear offloaded and suitably cleaned up I set off for dinner in a nearby Indian restaurant. The journey to the start of my ride was complete. Tomorrow the trip proper begins.
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