Hexham to Carlisle - 59 miles

Today is the day I climb over the spine of Britain. It is also a day where I will do more miles than yesterday but where I am hoping for more stops to look at Roman history directly related to the wall. At least today there are no ferries to miss to add time to an already longer day.

I left in morning mist, the cold piercing my jacket as I retraced my steps into Hexham and along the river to rejoin the route. I was not cold for long; after a cycle alongside a rail track I began a long and straight ascent on an empty road through the countryside. The mist still clung to the landscape around me enclosing me in a limited bubble of existence and preventing any enjoyment of the views the height gained might have afforded me. It was an hour before I saw a hint of shadow and a hazy smear of blue sky but it was still some time before the mist rolled back to reveal the empty and scrubby countryside around.

So far the route had not taken me along the wall, it lay a mile or so north across the rugged landscape the lanes now took me through. To get a first view of the wall on this, the Hadrian's Cycleway, I headed off route to Housesteads, the remains of a fort by the wall on a road parallel to the one I now cycled. It would also put me in a good position to find a point from where I could walk to the remains of the tree in Sycamore Gap, maliciously cut down just a year earlier and something I had for a long time hoped to see. 

Housesteads is sited on a ridge, a large rectangle of low stone walls sitting on undulating grassy slopes and within which the outline of various buildings can be seen. Even with the modern nearby road, the location felt isolated and wild. Nineteen hundred years ago, and on the most remote edges of the Roman Empire, it must have felt completely inhospitable. I walked the hundred and fifty yards or so across the fort to the most northern edge. From here I could see Hadran's wall disappearing across the barren and uneven landscape to my right, a grey snaking line of solid stone blocks that followed the sharply undulating hills and ridges of the ground before climbing the line of a steep escarpment in the near distance and disappearing out of sight.

Housesteads and Wall

Housesteads

I left Housteads, cycled a couple of miles west along the adjacent road and then headed north on a small climbing lane to reach the wall. The bike chained to a convenient signpost, I walked the Hadrian’s way footpath, following the wall as it cut directly across the terrain with no regard for topography. It followed the high ground of the landscape making steep ascents and equally sharp descents on small hills rather than following the easier, flatter ground nearby. Even in its aged and much reduced state it is an impressively solid structure. I passed the outline of old watchtowers, no longer any existing structure but now simply a stone footprint, and dropped down into the steep ravine known as Sycamore Gap. Only the stump of the tree remains but even so it was drawing quite a crowd and, a year on, the signs of new shoots are showing. I had always wanted to see this tree, supposedly the most photographed and iconic tree in Britain, but here I was a year too late. I retraced my steps back to my bicycle along a flatter path, away from the wall, and headed back to my cycle route.

Wall and Sycamore Gap

I rejoined the route near Vindolanda fort, famous for its well preserved artefacts, a result of the waterlogged and anaerobic soil. Vindolanda became well known when fragments of written records on wooden leaf tablets were found there and it is another place I have always wanted to visit. The expansive remains of the fort are settled among the surrounding hills and from the large car park and numbers of people milling around it is clearly a major draw.  The site though is big enough to absorb them and as I wandered its remains, including areas being currently excavated, it seemed quiet. The site's modern museum shows many of the items that have been discovered: well preserved leather shoes in a variety of styles; tools with their wooden handles still intact which showed how little some things have changed (the plastering tools were identical to those I remember my father using); and of course those writing tablets including an invitation to a birthday party and a number of military records.

Leather Shoes - Vindolanda

Vindolanda 

It was early afternoon before I set off again. I was still climbing towards the high point some nine miles ahead at Halfwhistle, supposedly the halfway point across the country according to the 'Centre of Britain' hotel that I passed. It was a wearing ride with the warmth of the sun and the continual undulating road. Sometimes a descent would give enough speed to make the following ascent, sometimes I had to work to reach the top. But the views across the valley to my left were spectacular. I forewent a visit to Birdoswald fort because of the time but I did use the shop to top up my water. Soon after, a long straight section of narrow road took me right by the wall and the remains of a frontier watchtower. It is one of the few stretches on the Hadrian’s Cycleway that you get to ride alongside the actual wall.

After Halfwhistle I had expected mostly descent for the next twenty-nine miles to Carlisle, I was after all over the spine of Britain. Unfortunately it was not to be. Other frustrations were also added to the afternoon: the lateness in the day and the warmth contributed to my tiredness; a couple of poorly signed junctions led to my having to backtrack; and the back lanes I was following would indicate Carlisle a certain distance in one direction while the route would send me in another, a direction which road signs would later confirm was taking me even further from Carlisle.

I eventually reached the outskirts of the city, somehow off the route but on a quiet lane. My hotel, an imposing older building on a main road, was only a street away from the route but I found it as much by luck as by judgement. I headed to my comfortable and well appointed room where tiredness caught up with me, a tiredness that was not simply from the efforts of the day. I made straight for my bed; eating would have to wait until breakfast.