Hadrian's Wall: Days 1 & 2
Dec. 29th, 2022 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Having spent a week in Orkney, B and I then spent a week walking Hadrian's Wall in the opposite direction to the one we took in 2017, taking an extra day and skipping the Newcastle suburbs. Day 1 we walked from Boness on Solway to Carlisle. Boness had struck us as rather run down when we visited in 2017, but this time it felt more like a village in the process of gentrification - it had acquired an extra restaurant and cafe, and a smattering of smart cars. It was the tail end of a heat wave and while neither of us dehydrated we both drank a lot of water once we got to our hotel in Carlisle. The walk itself was rather dull. In 2017 the Solway Firth came at the end of a long day of walking and had a certain grandeur under overcast skies. At the start of a walk in the blazing sunshine the stretch of the walk alongside it seemed shorter and less significant. This part of the walk is mostly fields and villages - charming in its way but 17 miles of it was plenty. At Carlisle we got to walk along the river which we'd been unable to do in 2017 because it was under repair following floods.

Anyway, here is B. at the very start of the walk.
Day 2 was much the same. We were walking a shorter distance so spent the morning sight-seeing in Carlisle (something we had skipped previously since we were walking 24 miles in one day and had no time) and then walked to Walton-on-the-Wall - setting quite a fast pace since rain was forecast late afternoon (though in the event it didn't arrive until into the night). The landscape was much the same - fields and villages and we somehow missed our first section of wall. At Walton we stayed in a bunkhouse with a donkey.


Anyway, here is B. at the very start of the walk.
Day 2 was much the same. We were walking a shorter distance so spent the morning sight-seeing in Carlisle (something we had skipped previously since we were walking 24 miles in one day and had no time) and then walked to Walton-on-the-Wall - setting quite a fast pace since rain was forecast late afternoon (though in the event it didn't arrive until into the night). The landscape was much the same - fields and villages and we somehow missed our first section of wall. At Walton we stayed in a bunkhouse with a donkey.
