The other great wall

by Tim Richards | 14 Jan 2019

Given the length of the historic Hadrian’s Wall, a line that once divided Scotland and England, it can seem daunting to visit – but you can actually see much of this Roman-era marvel just by catching a bus.

When is a wall not a wall? When it’s been worn down by the centuries, apparently, until there’s little left aof its structure but the name.

My wife Narrelle and I are standing at Chesters Roman Fort, one of the first stops on the AD122 bus route that traces the path of Hadrian’s Wall. There’s little evidence of the wall here, but there are the remains of a large Roman fort that lay along its path and stretched down to the North Tyne River.’

It’s a peaceful green space, with sheep grazing beside the stone remnants of stables, soldiers’ quarters, and an impressively intact Roman bathhouse preserved beneath silt.

Further west we’ll be able to see the wall itself, in the relatively remote hilly landscape where it remains intact. Constructed in the year AD 122 (hence the bus route number), Hadrian’s Wall marked the northernmost border of the Roman Empire. To one side lay tribal Scots and Picts, on the other the glories of Roman civilisation.

Nowadays, the wall’s path is followed by walking trails stretching 135 kilometres from Wallsend in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. Not everyone has the time or inclination to cover that hilly terrain on foot, however – which is where the bus comes in.

Ticket to ride

Operating from April to September, the AD122 bus links the towns of Hexham and Haltwhistle on a roughly hourly frequency, stopping at major sites of interest along the way. The Romans punctuated the wall with forts and watchtowers, so there are plenty of these to see as you ride by.

Waiting at the bus stop outside Chesters, we get chatting to a friendly group from Illinois, USA, whom we’ll encounter on and off for the rest of the day as we slowly progress westward.

Our next stop is Housesteads, another ex-fort on an impressive stretch of the wall. This is where we discover the bus doesn’t always drop passengers right at each attraction – in this case, it’s a 700-metre walk up a path from the visitor centre.

It’s cold on top of the ridge, but it’s obvious why the Romans built their wall up here. Its height enables a wonderful view across farmland, the distant green fields speckled with tiny white dots of sheep. It’s not hard to imagine this land being similarly farmed under the eyes of the legionnaires some 1,900 years ago.

It’s here that Narrelle and I are going to abandon the bus for a while, and take a walk beside the mighty Hadrian’s barrier. According to Google Maps on my phone, if we head west along the trail, it should take about an hour to pass Sycamore Gap with its much-photographed lone tree, and on to Steel Rigg where we can rejoin the bus.

That turns out to be an optimistic estimate. It’s not a difficult walk, but it has many ups and downs, which cause us to pick our steps carefully.

It’s lovely, though – an atmospheric hike with splendid views. At all times there’s the metre-high remnant wall to our right, and at one point we come upon the remains of a stone arch that would have allowed access to the unruly north.

Two hours into our supposedly one-hour walk, we spot a lake below a ridge in the distance. At this point the trail slopes downward, and we have some difficulty picking our way down the hillside without slipping.

So we bail out, taking a farm access track back to the main road. As the AD122 bus will pick up passengers at any point where it’s safe to pull over, it’s not long before we’ve been collected and dropped off at the next major stop: The Sill.

Opened in 2017, The Sill is billed as the National Landscape Discovery Centre – basically, a visitor centre for Northumberland National Park.

The Sill offers exhibitions, accommodation, free Wi-Fi and a garden roof, but we’re particularly happy to discover its cafe with filling soups and sandwiches. As those Roman troops no doubt learned before us, walking Hadrian’s Wall is hungry work.