Herd of Turtles

 

Wednesday, May 25th 2011
Day 2: Heddon-on-the-Wall to Humshaugh (16 miles)

Breakfast at North Farm is a help yourself continental. There is plenty of fruit, cereals, and pastries to choose from and eggs, if you want to cook them yourself. Paula joined us for a cup of coffee and a chat about farm life and gave us some suggestions for the day.

This was going to be a long day, and at 16 miles was beyond our self-imposed limit of 15 miles a day. While this wasn’t a popular choice, it was necessary due to the lack of choice of reasonably priced accommodation in the area. The George in Chollerford wanted something like £90 a night and the Hadrian Hotel in Wall had some bad reviews and wanted £80 a night for twin rooms. So instead, we walked a bit off trail to finish in Humshaugh.

Rather than walking all the way back into Heddon, we took a bridleway just past the farm that connects up with the path just before it crosses the A69. At this point, we started the long walk alongside the B6318, also known as the Military Road. The reason the path follows the road is that the road is in fact built on top of the Wall!

Walking on the path along the Military Road

It wasn’t long before we came to the unexcavated remains of our first Wall fort, Rudchester. There’s not much to see but there is an information plaque giving some details. Taking Paula’s advice, not long after Rudchester when the path turns away from the road, we crossed to the opposite verge and kept walking straight to save some distance. Apparently, the path does this detour as the landowner did not wish the path to cross his land. There is some space on the verge to walk and the visibility is good so it is pretty safe to take this short cut.

The real stars of this part of the walk are the earthworks built to accompany the Wall. Both the defensive ditch to the north of the Wall and the mysterious Vallum (consisting of a massive ditch with an earth mound to the north and south of it, that no one quite knows the purpose of) to the south of the Wall are visible in various places.

Walking along the northern ditch

Remains of the Vallum

We ran into our first E-W walkers at Harlow Hill campsite where they were just starting out for the day. We stopped for a tea break of a chocolate bar and some grapes at Whittledene Reservoir, which has some handy picnic tables, before pushing on for our lunch stop that we could see in the distance. We stopped at the Robin Hood Inn only long enough to stamp our passports as Paula had recommended Vallum Farm for lunch, and it was only another couple of minutes down the path. This is definitely the place to stop if you like your sweets – they make their own ice cream and have a fantastic selection of cakes. Jacquie and Susan opted to have Knickerbocker Glories (ice cream sundaes) for lunch...while Jess had a ploughman’s and I had a sandwich... and lemon drizzle cake. All got top marks. We relaxed and sank into our chairs, enjoying the food, not realizing how much time was passing. Before we knew it, we’d been there for over an hour, and we still had about 10 miles to go.

At the diversion around Wallhouses, there was a point that we had to go through a field with a bunch of bulls standing around the gates, but luckily, they all moved out of the way without much fuss. We also spotted some escaped sheep in a wheat field, but it looked like the farmer was on his way to round them up so we left them to enjoy their freedom while they could.

Escaped sheep!

Another interesting bit about this section is all the ingenious ways they’ve come up with for the path to cross field boundaries. There is the usual stile and kissing gate, but there are also ladder stiles, and stone stiles of varying types built into the stone walls you are crossing.

Just past Halton Shields is a small hill, which offers a great view of a nicely preserved section of the Vallum and the surrounding countryside to the south.

Remains of the Vallum and views to the south

Descending the hill, we came to the still covered remains of Halton Chesters Fort. You could clearly discern the outline of the fort in the mounds of grass the sheep were grazing on. A short distance down the lane was Halton Castle, a fortified manor house dating from the times when this was dangerous border country, and the border reivers (raiders of the 13th-17th centuries) kept everyone in fear of their lives.

Unexcavated remains at Halton Chesters

We finally made it to The Portgate just after 4pm. This rather uninspiring roundabout is roughly on the site where Roman Dere Street passed though the Wall. As this was the main North-South supply road, there was a fortified gate built into the wall to accommodate the road. We stopped at the Errington Arms, but as it keeps traditional pub hours (meaning it’s closed in the afternoon during the week) we were too late to purchase a snack. Instead, we munched on our own supplies and moaned that we still had so far to go.

The next stretch was a nice walk along next to a section of gorse-filled Vallum followed by our first bit of forest walking through the Stanley Plantation.

Walking next to the Vallum, with the path easy to follow as a mown stripe

We then crossed over the road to walk alongside the Wall ditch for a very windy section of the walk as we pushed on for St. Oswald’s Hill Head.

Now walking on the northern side of the Wall with the ditch to our left

We were hoping the tearoom was open, but as we arrived at 5:30pm we were out of luck. At this point, knowing we were going to be later than usual, we called our B&B and told them we’d be there around 7:30ish. It turns out they were going out at 7pm and they claimed if we were at St. Oswald’s we should be there by 7, no problem. Looking at the map, we determined that if we were going to make Humshaugh in time we would have to cut off the path detour to Wall and brave walking on the verge along the Military Road as it was the more direct route. So we walked quickly past Heavenfield without having a look, and crossed to Planetrees where we checked out the first chunk of the Wall since Heddon and a nice bit of the Vallum.

Heavenfield, where St. Oswald won a battle against the Welsh in the 630s

Wall remains at Planetrees

Looking at the amount of traffic, which was minimal, we decided to walk directly into Chollerford along the B6318. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you have time on your side, as the cars whizz along this road at high speed. We made it safely and rejoined the path crossing the bridge over the North Tyne. At the roundabout, instead of following the path left, we headed right, past the George Hotel. Humshaugh is slightly less than a mile up the road. I unfortunately didn’t have any directions for the B&B and just assumed they would be on the main road from their address. We spent a good long time getting lost in what is a very tiny village, until a nice lady noticed and pointed us in the right direction.

We arrived at Mingary Barn just after 7pm and Paula and her husband quickly but warmly welcomed us to their immaculate home. This is another great conversion, with the house designed to take advantage of the features of the former barn. We had one twin and one double room both ensuite. The rooms had everything you needed and the beds were very comfy. We relaxed for a bit before heading down the road to The Crown Inn, to get some dinner. What a great little pub! When you look at the menu and order, you think what you are getting is standard pub grub, but what is served up is in fact much better than expected. All food is homemade and cooked to order. It had all four of us raving!

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