Hadrian's Wall Path

Steel Rigg → Walton

Distance: 17.24 miles
Ascent: 765 metres
Duration: 6 hours 39 minutes

Into the wind
« Not walked | Not walked »

The wind was our greatest foe today. From the moment we woke up at The Sill YHA we knew what was against us: looking out of the window, all the trees were standing defiantly but their branches stretched out wildly, giving the game away,

Heads down with hoods tightened, we headed west. Again we were on familiar territory across the backs of crags that we'd climbed in March. A young cat bounded up the path to greet us at Thirlwell Castle, and shortly after we parted company with the Pennine Way to continue on as-yet-unknown territory.

Detours were the order of the day once we'd crossed into Cumbria, with a collapsed footbridge, another under reconstruction and a re-routing of the path all nudging us away from our originally intended route. The National Trails website is an excellent resource for learning about such things, so none of them took us by surprise.

At Birdoswold Fort we saw some rude tourists who seemed singularly unimpressed with the wall itself. Perhaps their expectations had been set unfairly high; having walked alongside it for four days (so far) meant that all we could do was shake our heads in disagreement.