This was our first ever ‘thru-hike‘ to coin an Americanism. We did this walk in August 2022, the first summer after the Covid pandemic. We had always had a huge hankering to do the Hadrian’s Wall hike and I have always had a desire to do a ‘thru-hike’ after reading Barefoot sisters Southbound and Cheryl Strayed’s books on walking the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails.
I spent many anal weeks prior to our hike researching the best places to stop on the route, the direction, the weights of the stuff we would be carrying in our packs. Yes, the one thing I did not research was the fact there are ‘sherpa’ companies in the UK now who will carry your packs, so I blindly weighed and counted everything we needed to carry.
We did decide, however, as over 50 year olds that we would not be camping in tents, so that was a huge amount of weight to remove. Hadrian’s Wall is never far from a hostel or hotel unlike some hiking paths in the UK. The furthest we ever needed to add to our walk to get off the path to a rest stop was around a 1.5 miles to get to Twice Brewed inn.
We decided to walk West to East, going against the majority. We did this because we realised that the wind and weather would more likely be behind us if we did it this way. In hindsight, we were really pleased we chose this direction as the final steps into Newcastle are far more interesting than into Carlisle which is flat and boring. I will confess now, we didn’t go the final bit to Wallsend, however (also very boring!) so we didn’t quite do the WHOLE path. We also appreciated that I was awaiting knee surgery, we live in a fairly flat part of the world and we are no longer 21, so we decided that 12 miles per day would be the maximum walking time per day.
Our route ended up looking like this:
- Day one: Carlisle – Walton 11.5 miles and we stayed at Florrie’s on the Wall bunkhouse.
- Day two: Sandysike (Florrie’s) to Birdoswold – 8 miles and we stayed at Slackhouse Farm bunkhouse (that was a story which I’ll fill you in on!)
- Day three: Birdoswold – Steel Rig – 9.5 miles and we then got off the path to stay at Twice Brewed Inn.
- Day four: Steel Rig to Brocolitia – 8 miles and we were picked up by my cousin and stayed with her in Hexham.
- Day five: Brocolitia to Portgate – 9.5 miles another night at my cousin’s house (which did mean we walked Day five with just day packs – OMG what a delight!
- Day six: Portgate to Heddon on the Wall – 10 miles and we walked this section with some great friends, passing the house we used to share when we all lived on the wall! We then stayed at their home that evening.
- Day seven: Heddon on the Wall to Newcastle – 10 miles
According to my early calculations from home, the distance we were going to cover was around 66 miles or 106 kms, but with the extra walking we did from the path to various places to stay we covered more like 80 miles in the end.
We were, in all honesty, blessed with the weather, bar one day, Day two. That was quite a miracle in itself if you are familiar with the British weather. If I’m frank, day two was hideous for the weather, to the point everything was soaked and we tried to dry it in the place we stayed at that night only for the room to flood and soak everything for the second time. I think there were probably a lot of pairs of socks and underwear hanging from our rucksacks the next day and we were eternally grateful for the use of Frances and Christine’s washing machine and dryer when we reached them!
Another reason for walking West to East was the windsill view. I think it would have been far more disparaging seeing the view above ahead of us, rather than looking back on the distance we’d achieved.
I absolutely LOVED this hike and am itching to do another one. I have written this blog post very retrospectively, I went in for knee surgery soon after and it has really taken until around now, in 2024 to begin to feel capable again of walking these distances. I still get niggles, so still tape if we do anything too far, but we have our sights set on the Northumberland coastal path and the Norfolk costal path over the next couple of years, so watch this space. We also feel incredibly blessed to have seen Sycamore Gap in full glory before it was so criminally destroyed.
If you’re interested, I also noted our kit list which is not, by any means expert opinion or advice:
- 40l rucksacks and waterproof covers
- two lightweight travel towels each
- bladder
- mini stove, flint and steel, waterproof matches
- socks – loads including silk inners
- waterproof trousers and coats – packable
- mug, plate, spoon
- portable charger (one between us) we recharged it at the hostels/inns overnight
- blister plasters
- First aid kit including antihistamine
- toiletries – minimal
- flip flops
- 3 x walking trousers inc a cut off pair (I mainly used leggings as they were less bulky to carry)
- 3 x t-shirts
- yoga pants to double as pyjamas
- 1 base layer
- underwear
- beanie
- sunglasses
- gloves
- walking poles
- Food and snacks – we mainly ate in the evenings at the relevant hostel as this cut down the weight, but we obviously needed snacks and lunchtime food which we replenished most days before we set off along with the water.
I would suggest, in my currently limited experience of thru- hiking but experience of some of the other costal and long distance paths (Norfolk, South west, Wales, Chilterns, Thames) that Hadrian’s wall is by far the easiest for not having to camp or walk miles off the path to find accommodation or supplies. There are several areas that go through villages (as you might expect) with shops or even cafes set up in people’s gardens with honesty boxes. It is a brilliant terrain, with a mix of up and down, a minor scramble around Sycamore Gap, but mainly on rocky/grassy terrain. You do see the actual wall a couple of times but the path is slightly diverted for the obvious reason of preservation of the wall. It is superbly signposted and I think the only day we got lost and added a few extra miles was, believe it or not, getting into Newcastle itself. You’d have thought it would be obvious, but actually you end up in industrial areas around Blaydon and it’s easy to lose the path. I would really recommend this thru-hike. If you want to ‘Mc-hike‘ as we nicknamed the people just carrying day packs as the Sherpa companies carried their big packs, then there are several companies now, none of whom I can recommend as we did it properly 😉 !!!
