Hadrians Wall

I have always considered the prospect of trail running Hadrian's Wall - I believe it is around 86 miles in length - so it would be an expedition over a few days. I say this thinking I could easily do it - but I would need to do some serious training, strengthen the ankle and find a crazy bunch of fellow runners to go with me. I have previously run 33 miles in a day, but I am nowhere near that level currently.

With this potential running dream in mind and Garry's love of Romans through his metal detecting hobby we decided it would be rude to not take a sneak peak at Hadrian's Wall while we were in the area.

There seemed to be plenty of National Trust sites stemming from the B6318. Each car park had footpaths sign posted towards the wall with a variety of distances. We had to pick wisely as we could see in the distance the rain clouds were heading our way.

We decided to park up at a place called Walltown Crags. From here you could reach Hadrian's Wall in about a mile. Car parking is £4 for the whole day - this is the only option - but is transferrable to other car parks in the area.

Initially the path looks very accessible but it is worth noting that after about half a mile the climb to the wall is very steep and uneven. We consider ourselves relatively fit, but with a strong wind blowing across the top of the hills it was difficult to maintain balance and reach the top. I nearly lost my hat a few times and had to hide behind the wall.

We both knew that the 'Wall' was not in its original format and that over hundreds of thousands of years its structure had broken down, but we were still surprised that the wall just stopped.

We walked along the stretch of the 'Wall' and suddenly it came to an end - there was no sight of it in the distance. As always Wikipedia has a good article on Hadrian's Wall and this explains why certain sections are no longer visible. Maybe I will need to get my skates on and run the route before it disappears!

We had great ideal also to walk to the nearby Thirlwall Castle - from the carpark it was around 3/4 of a mile walk.

This seemed like an easy walk and the castle looked amazing from the photos. We started out on our trek and ended up in a middle of a field, surrounded by cows, rain coming in towards us and I lost the ability to walk as the wind was blowing me over so much. At this point I may have had a bit of a meltdown and decided that we would retreat and abandon the castle adventure. From the website link you will see that it's worth a visit however and we are gutted the weather was not in our favour. As the rain started to hammer down though - it had been the right choice!

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