Tuesday 4th October

The last day of our Hadrian's Wall holiday.

Sunrise over the Solway Firth from our room at the guest house:

A lovely but slightly eerie place.

We told our taxi driver to the station about our night out in Carlisle and she told us that her daughter never goes out in the city.

It was a tinch chilly waiting for the train in Carlisle station especially sitting on the metal seats so the sit mats came in handy.  We only used them once for real!

We felt a great sense of achievement on finishing the walk and luckily, although Catherine did suffer from wet feet we didn't suffer any blisters but we did still like this message on the wall of our final guest house:

Monday 3rd October

Day 10 of walking Hadrian's Wall.  Highfield Farm to Bowness-on-Solway.  (5.5 miles).

Quite a short walk today and we weren't allowed to arrive at our accommodation early so we punctuated our walking with visits to the pubs en route (just for coffees) the Highland Laddie in Glasson and the Hope and Anchor in Port Carlisle.

We continued our walk along the road through the marshes which do get flooded regularly:

We even saw a sign that talked about the maximum depth being 3 feet but luckily that wasn't the case today!

We went past Drumburgh Castle:

which was actually more of a fortified house back in the day when "raiders" used to row over the Solway Firth from Scotland.

For a lot of the way we were quite close to the Solway Firth and we saw lots of birds:

During the nineteenth century attempts were made to get goods from the sea to Carlisle via first a canal and then a railway at Port Carlisle but neither were very long-lived.  Here is where the old platform was in Port Carlisle:

It was good to reach Bowness-on-Solway and the end of our walk:

We went to the King's Arms for another coffee and to buy our certificates:

And tried to find somewhere to put our feet in water at this side of the country however we met an old lady who put us off the idea; she told us that when she had moved to Bowness she had gone out to a sand bar and then had trouble getting back because of the tide.  Also walking over the mud flats wasn't all that inviting so we decided to go to our guest house, Shore Gate House instead. 

The guest house was lovely with good views over the Solway and the owners were very attentive, possibly too attentive as the lady of the house kept popping out and asking us if we were all right when we were in the hall:

We had a good meal in the King's Arms and all sorts of people came in while we were there, a supermarket delivery van driver looking for a house, someone who had missed the bus and the barmaid and regulars were very good at sorting them out:

Sunday 2nd October

Day 9 of walking Hadrian's Wall.  Carlisle to Highfield Farm.  (9 miles).

Our walk today was supposed to end at Burgh-by-Sands but our accommodation was at Highfield Farm 2 miles further along Hadrian's Wall path which means that our walk tomorrow will be shorter.

We passed through the village of Beaumont whose church, St. Marys, is the only church which stands on the line of Hadrian's Wall indeed the Normans used stones from the wall to build it although it has been altered a lot since then:

At times on the walk today we could glimpse Scotland across the Solway Firth:

We found that we were sharing the road with cows on their way to graze on the fertile fields which are flooded regularly by the Solway Firth.  We were later informed by our host that cows have right of way on the road which didn't stop some idiot driving into one, our host was forced to report him to the "marsh man".  When I hear about a marsh man I have a vision of someone green, covered in vegetation and dripping, with a floppy hat.

After settling in at the farm:

The view from our window

our host took us back to the Greyhound Inn, where we had stopped earlier for a cuppa, for dinner.

Everyone at the farm and the pub were very good and the little girl at the farm was particularly helpful when we phoned and seemed much older than she turned out to be.

Saturday 1st October

Day 8 of walking Hadrian's Wall.  Crosby-on-Eden to Carlisle.  (5 miles).

Our taxi driver drove us back to Crosby-on-Eden this morning and we were met by an interesting sight - a very long tractor convoy, going to a charitable event.

We walked along by the River Eden for most of the way today:

We encountered a totem in a garden and arrived in Carlisle early in the afternoon:

After a freshen-up we went to book our evening meal (which was quite difficult as it was a Saturday, we had to book for 9 o'clock which is way past our bedtime on this trip!), had a look around Carlisle and a tea and toasted teacake/scone at a lovely tearoom:

Angela also walked the wall in a couple of minutes!:

Our accommodation, Warwick Lodge, was very accommodating as the proprietress allowed us to check-in early:

We found Carlisle a city of two halves at night.  It was quite quiet down the road where our accommodation was and also the nice Italian restaurant called Sotto that we ate in but just around the corner where we went for a drink before the restaurant was completely different with some very drunk people around very early in the evening.  The pub we choose only had one beer on despite having a long line of pumps, they didn't have many glasses and Catherine and I were definitely well over-dressed!  On our way from the pub to the restaurant we passed a man collapsed on the floor being tended to by a bouncer and with the paramedic ambulance arriving, then we walked round the corner back to the serenity of our street - very odd.

Friday 30th September

Day 7 of walking Hadrian's Wall.  Lanercost to Crosby-on-Eden.  (8 miles).

Before setting off today we took pictures next to the beautiful bridge which was near to our accommodation last night:

Today's walk was flatter then yesterday's but very muddy so a bit challenging:

We witnessed some modern-day sheep herding:

The sheep dog was in the vehicle!

We walked quickly so our taxi took us onto Brampton for a look round before we went to our accommodation.  The taxi driver was an ex-scouser and was very funny and informative about Brampton!

Brampton was a lovely little town.  We had tea and teacakes and scones at the Off the Wall café and saw a statue of the man himself, Hadrian:

Our accommodation tonight was lovely.  We stayed in the Oakwood Park Hotel just outside Brampton which was like staying in a country house in former times.  We were pretty muddy after our walk and the proprietress, Wendy washed our gaiters for us!  We ate in the hotel and had a lovely dinner with lots of choice of dishes.

Thursday 29th September

Day 6 of walking Hadrian's Wall.  Greenhead to Lanercost.  (7.5 miles).

It rained a lot in the night - we walked along this path yesterday!

Some people go to a lot of trouble to look after the path.  We came across this rather pretty garden:

We had several more sightings of the ladies from yesterday and we saw a lot of the wall today:

And we saw the new footbridge over the River Irthing which was made out of the same metal as was used in the Angel of the North sculpture.

We finished our walk at Lanercost Priory where we enjoyed a lovely cup of tea and a teacake.

Our accommodation tonight was in Abbey Bridge, Lanercost.  The accommodation was in a separate house which was lovely with a guest lounge and dining room for breakfast downstairs and the bedrooms upstairs.  Our hostess was lovely, an ex-headmistress who kept us all in order. 

We were driven out to a pub, the Belted Will, by our host for dinner and then we were driven back home afterwards by the chef!  

Wednesday 28th September

Day 5 of walking Hadrian's Wall - Housesteads to Greenhead.  (9.75 miles).

I survived a dodgy drive back to Housesteads in the morning when my seat belt wouldn't work but our host said it would be all right he would look at it later - not very reassuring for me at the time.  He kindly drove us to get a view of Vindolanda Fort as we didn't have time to visit it.

Housesteads is the only part of Hadrian's Wall where you are allowed to walk on the wall for a short distance:

Today's walk was probably the toughest in terms of the amount of climbing up and down that we had to do and the steepness of the path.  The weather was also quite challenging but we did see a lot of the wall!

Another feature of today's walk was seeing the ladies who had been staying in our accommodation last night.  They didn't seem too pleased to see us when we kept bumping into them.

Our hotel tonight, the Greenhead Hotel, was a little bit down-market in comparison to the previous ones.  The staff were very friendly though and found Catherine some plastic bags to help keep her feet dry as her boots were leaking!