Hiking Hadrian’s Wall–Day One

by Sean McLachlan on

The Hadrian’s Wall Path starts with a bang.

It doesn’t look promising. This 84 mile National Trail begins at the appropriately named Wallsend neighborhood of Newcastle Upon Tyne, an industrial city in northern England. Not my ideal way to start a six-day hike, but right at the Wall’s eastern end is Segedunum, one of the most completely excavated Roman forts in the world. Virtually all of it has been uncovered except for a strip buried by a nearby road. An observation tower offers a fantastic view of the foundations of every building.

Going up six floors in the tower’s elevator, I step out into a broad viewing room with floor-to-ceiling windows. To the south flows the River Tyne, an important trade route even in Roman times. Wharves and shipyards line each bank, massive cranes towering over them. To the north, homes and shops stand in orderly rows stretching as far as I can see. At my feet the fort spreads out like a diagram from one of my archaeology books. The headquarters dominates the center. Next to it is the commanding officer’s villa. Even though nothing is left but the foundations it still emanates an air of luxury. The common soldiers had to settle for the long, narrow barracks that run the width of the fort.

Just beyond Segedunum I can see the beginning of the Hadrian’s Wall Path (pictured here) cutting through a screen of trees and disappearing amidst the crowd of buildings. Further to the west all I see is city. My first goal is a village 15 miles away, just beyond Newcastle’s western edge. I have a lot of walking to do before I get to the countryside.

But first I want to explore the fort.

The museum is filled with artifacts found at the site and around Newcastle. There are reconstructions of Roman rooms, diagrams of Hadrian’s Wall, and statues of the man himself. But the most interesting part is next door where there’s a faithful reproduction of a Roman bath, minus the water, slaves, and occasionally randy bathers. Roman forts usually had baths, as it was considered essential for good health and a symbol of Roman civilization. Even poor people went to baths, with the wealthy sponsoring free days for those too destitute to fork over a few copper coins.

After browsing the displays I wander around the fort itself. There’s nothing left but the outlines of buildings, and my ears are filled with the rush of nearby traffic and the horn from a passing boat, yet I find this place strangely evocative of the past. Its completeness despite its position in the middle of a bustling city makes it seem almost defiant, a 2,000 year-old reminder of Newcastle’s origins. But this is just a taste of what’s out there beyond the office towers. It’s time to get walking.

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I won’t lie to you, this first stretch of the Path is underwhelming. I’ve never been one for city hiking, and it’s a long, hard slog over pavement. The path mainly runs by the river, so at least I get to watch the boats and get a few glimpses of the past–a Norman keep, some ornate Victorian buildings, and a series of magnificent bridges–but I’m in a hurry to get into the country. There’s nothing more beautiful than the English countryside in good weather, so it’s probably just as well that there’s been a steady drizzle ever since I left Segedunum. I’ll save the good weather for later.

I leave the city center behind and continue along the Tyne through the outskirts. At times the path leaves the river and passes by office parks and abandoned factories. In the distance I can see hills that haven’t been completely absorbed by the city. Housing developments stick like scabs to their otherwise green slopes. People are fewer here–the occasional jogger, a couple of cyclists with packs who are probably doing Hadrian’s Wall too, and a guy in a business suit who parks near the river, gets out, looks down at the water for a couple of seconds with a grim expression, glances at me, then gets back in his car and drives off.

I have one last bit of purgatory before the wilderness–an industrial estate with rows of buildings like concrete boxes. Past these sprawls a vast junkyard of thousands of rusted cars surrounded by a chain-link fence and enough barbed wire to supply the Western Front. Giant signs tell me NO PARKING. NO DUMPING. NO PHOTOGRAPHS. WARNING: GUARD DOGS. I don’t know who these signs are for because I see nobody. Many of the cars are wrecked, and one near the fence, which looks like a giant hand has given it a karate chop, has a message scrawled in yellow paint. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRINK AND DRIVE. I imagine a group of laughing teenagers coming back from some Newcastle club on a Saturday night. A sudden turn, a truck coming the other way, the kid at the wheel swerves but it’s too late and they go under. I need to get to those hills.

Finally I’m through to a nice stretch of greenery along the placid river. It’s still raining but my spirits lift. The steeple of a village church rising through the trees on the opposite bank provides a welcome change from decrepit docks. Past that I see an old earthwork from the Battle of Newburn Ford, when in 1640 invading Scots met an English army here. The earthworks were English forts, placed there to stop the Scots from crossing the river. They didn’t work. It didn’t help that the English were outnumbered nearly four to one. Newcastle fell to the Scots and the massive amount of spending to get rid of them was one of the contributing causes of the English Civil War.

This has always been a border region. The Romans built the Wall to keep out the Picts and other tribes. The Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and later English kings had trouble with the Scots too. I pass through the battlefield and on through some farmers’ fields. It’s getting dark but it has finally stopped raining and I’m almost to my goal.

I continue on through a golf course and up a steep hill. At the summit is Heddon-on-the-Wall and my first stop, the Houghton North Farm. It’s a farm-turned-hostel at the edge of the village that serves walkers doing the Hadrian’s Wall Path. After settling in I head on over to the local pub for a huge meal of roast beef and a couple of pints of ale. One of the best parts about hiking in England is there’s always a pub waiting for you at the end of the day.

I feel pretty good. I’ve done the first and worst stretch of the hike and am 15 miles closer to my goal of crossing England. Most importantly, the city is behind me. From now on it’s open countryside all the way to the other coast. The good stuff is all ahead of me.

Tomorrow: Day Two, from Heddon-on-the-Wall to Chollerford.

Read the entire series here.

All photos by Sean McLachlan unless otherwise noted.

Zurich through the wide angle lens

by Grant Martin on

One of the most entertaining instruments in the photographer’s toolbox is the wide angle lens, a massive creature full of glass, angles and depth. Contrary to traditional optics, wide angle lenses broaden the field of view available to the camera, resulting in massive, sprawling images from one single shot. It’s also got the effect of stretching anything at the periphery of the image, so often it can be a poor choice for capturing portraits.

I pretend not to be a either a person well-educated in cameras or a good photographer, but as our colleague Jeremy Kressmann puts it, it’s hard to take a bad picture with a nice lens and a huge sensor inside of your camera.

And so taking advantage of some outstanding fares to Zurich this summer, I put my Canon Rebel to work.

Zurich, the financial capital of Switzerland is a city full of depth, with rolling, lush hills, cobble stone streets, volumes of character, a flawless public transportation system and beautiful lake at its foot. Were one to wring out three Genevas into one city, it would be Zurich. In a way, it’s the perfect candidate for a blogger with a wide angle lens. Take a look.

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Walking across England along Hadrian’s Wall

by Sean McLachlan on

A few days before my 40th birthday my three-year-old son woke me up by crawling on top of me and squashing his stuffed animals into my face.

“Be nice to me, I’m an old man,” I mumbled around a mouthful of orange fur.

“You’re not old,” he said. “If you are boring you are old.”

Good point, kid. Better celebrate my passing into middle age by doing something interesting.

So the day after I and a few friends held a memorial service for my youth (1969-2009) I set off to the English/Scottish borderlands to walk the UK’s newest National Trail–The Hadrian’s Wall Path. This path cuts across the width of England along Hadrian’s Wall, the Roman Empire’s northernmost boundary. I’d never walked across a country before and figured it would be a good way to prove I’m not totally over the hill. Granted, that part of England is only 84 miles wide, but hey, I’m getting on in years.

Much of what we now call England was taken over by the Romans and called Britannia. Julius Caesar invaded in 55 and 54 BC, but didn’t stay, and it was up to the Emperor Claudius to take over the region in 43 AD. After a lot of fierce fighting Britannia became an important province. The common perception that it was a freezing backwater is untrue. Londinium (now called London) was a thriving provincial capital with impressive public buildings, and there was an extensive system of roads and public works all across the province.

Hadrian’s Wall was built starting in 122 AD by the Emperor Hadrian to defend against incursions by the fierce tribes of Scotland, especially the Picts. It’s the largest Roman monument in the world, a continuous stone wall with earthworks in front and behind it, as well as forts and lookout towers at regular intervals along its length. While it was obviously meant for defense, that was not its only purpose. The Roman legions weren’t constantly fighting hordes of northern barbarians swarming out of the mists. Trade was more common than swordplay, and the wall existed to control movement going north and south. A continuous ditch with earthen ramparts on either side called the Vallum was constructed to the south of the Wall. It’s purpose was to keep Roman citizens from passing to the north without being accounted for. The records are scanty, but they probably had to pay some sort of toll when passing through the Milecastles, fortified gateways found every mile along the Wall.

Most of the forts are located a few miles to the south of the Wall in areas with good farmland. If the sentries on the Wall spotted trouble the legions could march to the rescue. The smaller garrisons on the Wall itself could fight a delaying action until help arrived, or fall back and let the invaders cross over the Wall and get beaten by the legions in open battle.While Hadrian’s Wall is traditionally seen as the northernmost border of the Roman Empire, for a brief period there was a wall 100 miles to the north built by the Emperor Antoninus Pius beginning in 142 AD. The Antonine Wall stretched 37 miles from the Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, but was abandoned after about twenty years because keeping the garrisons supplied that far to the north was expensive and the land between the two walls wasn’t very productive. A trail runs along that wall, and if there’s enough interest I might hike that one next year and write about it. Both walls are World Heritage Sites.

Hadrian’s Wall acted as the Roman Empire’s defense to the north for another two centuries until the Romans began to pull resources out of Britannia. Invasions by Persians and Germans were threatening more valuable provinces closer to Rome. One by one the legions were recalled to defend the Roman heartland, and in 410 AD the Emperor Honorius told the province to look to its own defense. More than three centuries of Roman rule had come to an end.

The Hadrian’s Wall Path became the UK’s 15th National Trail in 2003. It meanders for 84 miles along the route of the Wall from the Roman fort of Segedunum in the city of Newcastle Upon Tyne to Bowness-on-Solway, on Solway Firth. The path goes through urban areas, rolling countryside, rough crags, remote highlands, and quiet marshland, giving the walker several different experiences.

I decided to walk from east to west. While this put the prevailing wind in my face, it allowed me to leave Newcastle behind on the first day and to go into ever more remote regions of the English/Scottish border country. I divided the hike into six days of approximately 14 miles each. This allowed for time each day to take detours to the many museums and archaeological sites along the way, take hundreds of pictures, send lots of postcards to my son (he’s all about the postcards), and savor one of the most impressive and evocative hikes I’ve ever been on. So come join me every day for the next week as I walk across England and through 2,000 years of history.

Tomorrow: Day One!

Sleep on a bed made of hay at a German heuhotel

by Katie Hammel on

It seems hay is not just for horses – it’s also for sleeping on at hotels in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Heuhotels (heu means hay in German) are hotels housed in converted barns where guests bed down in sleeping bags in dorm rooms with layers of hay covering the floor.

The heuhotel Zum Alten Marstall, located near the Neckar Valley in Germany, sits at the foot of an 11th century castle and takes the medieval theme and runs with it. The hay beds are referred to as “knight’s lairs” and staff dress in medieval clothes. Hay beds start at €19,50, while private rooms are €31 per person.

While other hay hotels around the area may not have a theme, they do offer extras like privacy curtains or “rooms” in converted stalls, and most seem to offer a communal breakfast and outdoor activities. It seems like the hotels would appeal most to budget travelers, families with young kids, or eco-conscious travelers, but one heuhotel owner claims the hay beds are also popular with couples, saying “there’s nothing more exciting than a night on the hay”….except perhaps a roll in the hay?

Check out a list of heuhotels all around Germany here. Or click here to see some unusual hotels in the United States.

[via CNN]

Russians voted worst tourists in the world – French and Germans relieved

by Scott Carmichael on

Polls looking for the worst tourists in the world are always a sure way to get yourself in the news – especially if the results pick a country not too popular with the voting public. Back in July, the French won the dubious honor of being the worst in the world.

Brit travel web site “Real Holiday Reports” published the results of their survey, and revealed that Russian tourists are currently the least popular.

According to respondents, Russians are rude, dress poorly, burp and swear in public, flash their money around, grab as much food as they can at the buffet and push into queues.

To me, this sounds like most tourists I encounter, but apparently, the Russians take being rude to a whole new level.

In Europe, German tourists are known for their pool chair tactics – getting up a 6:30am to snag chairs for their family by placing towels on them. Russians simply take the chairs up their room the night before, and bring them down in the morning, guaranteeing a decent spot. Some may call this inexcusable rudeness, I call it innovative brilliance.

Of course, it is just a matter of time till the next survey comes along, and picks a different winner. Eventually someone will come to the conclusion that most tourists behave poorly on vacation.