14 September 2023 – Hadrian’s Wall

Miles driven today = 44

Total Miles to date = 505

We didn’t have the best night’s sleep last night.  The rain was pounding on the roof at 3am and there was also an annoying extractor fan at the Anglers Arms which turned itself on and off at 20 minute intervals jolting us awake each time it did so.

So we made an early departure and drove half way down the western shoreline of Kielder Water to the Waterside Visitor Centre, where we parked up for breakfast whilst looking out across the reservoir.

There are a number of sculptures and installations scattered around the centre and along the nearby paths that follow the shoreline.  Now that we had re-entered in the wonderful World of online data, Facebook reminded me that today is 16 years to the day since Lisa and I first got together in a muddy field in Scotland, so off we toddled on a romantic exploratory wander.

I loved this great little hedgehog bench.

This is the Human Burrow.  Once your eyes adjust to the very dimly lit conditions inside it becomes an audio/visual representation of the sights and sounds you might experience if you lived underground.

This Crazy Golf Course was in the form of a map of the reservoir and the surrounding forest where the holes are named after local landmarks rather than simply being numbered.

Before we left Kielder Water behind us we made a quick stop at the dam.  It was built between 1975 and 1981 and holds back 200 billion litres of water.

We followed the verdant valley of the North Tyne River downstream via Bellingham and Wark until we joined up with the B6318, which roughly follows the line of Hadrian’s Wall from East to West.  Shortly after joining it we came to the Roman Fort and Museum at Chesters.

Chesters was built to protect the bridge over the North Tyne which was seen as a potential weak point in repelling the pagan hordes from the North.  It was a cavalry base with 500 horses and their attendants stationed here.  These are some of the barracks where the men lived alongside their horses.

This underground chamber is thought to have been used as a strongroom in the fort’s administrative centre for storing valuables and important documents.

This was the Fort Commander’s House.  The columns supported the floor and the space below allowed for underfloor heating.

The Bath House down by the river is reckoned to be the best preserved in England.  This was the cloakroom and it is thought these recesses were used for storing the bathers’ clothes and possessions.

This was a steam room, much like a modern day Turkish Bath.

This is where the Roman bridge would have crossed the river.  You can still see some of the foundations on the far bank although the river has altered it’s course somewhat since Roman times.

This house belonged to a guy called John Clayton who to all intents and purposes discovered Chesters whilst digging around in his back garden in 1840.  He became so wrapped up in Roman history as a result that he bought 4 more forts and a 20 mile stretch of Hadrian’s Wall in order to protect them.

There is a museum at Chesters exhibiting a lot of the artefacts which Clayton excavated.  A lot of the stones still have legible inscriptions which have been translated underneath.

Clayton never catalogued his findings in the way that archeologists do today and so it is uncertain which site a lot of the artefacts came from.  Anything that wasn’t considered to be of interest was allegedly just dumped in the river so who knows what treasures may have inadvertently been simply chucked away.

We drove on a few miles to another fort site at Brocolitia.  This has never been excavated properly and appears to simply be a grassy mound but a little way outside it is this Temple dedicated to Mithras. 

A little further on we stopped again at the Housesteads hill fort which is the best preserved of the 16 forts which would have originally been dotted along the length of the wall.  At its peak Housesteads would have housed as many as 800 soldiers and a big settlement grew up around the fort to support them.

These are some of the barracks the men would have slept in, sometimes as many as 10 to a room.

This was the granary where cereals would have been stored to keep them safe from the elements and rodents.

This area would have been used as a hospital to treat the sick and injured from the fort as well as neighbouring garrisons.

There are dozens of sites along the wall that one can visit but we felt that the 3 we have visited so far were quite enough for one day so we headed for the Hadrians Wall campsite which was another recommendation from our friend Cheryl and where we have booked ourselves in for 2 nights.  There are some great walks we can make from here which take in a section of the wall and the famous Sycamore Gap viewpoint but the weather forecast for tomorrow is atrocious so we may just have a van day and save more Roman experiences for another time.

Those Hedgehog Mushrooms we foraged yesterday came to good use this evening.  Lisa’s culinary magicianship conjured up a couple of steaming bowls of the mushrooms with puy lentils, courgettes, onions and sun dried tomatoes topped off with some smoked tofu.  And we’ve still got plenty left for another day!

15 September 2023 - Rain Almost Stops Play