Herd of Turtles

 

Sunday, May 29th 2011
Day 6: Steel Rigg to Gilsland (9 miles)

Breakfast was an excellent full-English fry-up well cooked and lots of choice. We were offered and accepted a lift back to the Steel Rigg car park from one of the staff in the Farm’s people carrier, to start the path where we had left the day before.

It was an oppressively grey morning. Not only was it lightly raining, it was misty too, making everything feel quite close in an obviously open countryside. It was once again blowing a gale, straight in our faces. We dug deep, and started to climb onto Winshield Crags, stopping every now and then to enjoy the view north towards Saughy Rigg, which was out there somewhere in the mist.

Grey, misty morning, looking back at Steel Rigg and Peel Crags

Coming down off Winshield Crags to Bogle Hole just before Caw Gap, disaster struck. I was at the bottom, when I heard a shriek behind me and turned to see that Jess had gone down and was rolling down the hill. She was able to stop herself and sit up by the time that I, and another couple of walkers behind us, had reached her. A quick assessment found that she was unhurt except for her ankle, and with the aid of two walking poles she was able to get to the bottom of the hill. Jacquie, Susan and Alison were waiting there and we all had a bit of a discussion about what to do. Jess felt that with help, she could manage to get to the road at Caw Gap, but beyond that she was done walking for the day. We settled on calling ahead to our B&B for the night and ask for a local taxi number, as I had unfortunately forgotten to note one down when putting together a list of important numbers to carry with me. Jess would then go right to the B&B for rest and relaxation in hope that the injury wasn’t bad and that she could rejoin us tomorrow.

We slowly made our way to Caw Gap, no doubt over-protective and cautiously wary of every step Jess was taking. We rang Denise at Brookside Villa where we were booked in for the night, and explained the situation. Rather than giving us the taxi number, she came and picked up Jess herself!

We all waited beside the road and Denise arrived after about 20 minutes. Jess wouldn’t hear of any of us going along to keep her company and convinced Denise she didn’t need to go to the hospital. Her ankle was swelling, but she was in good humour. We watched them speed away and the remaining four of us set off to complete the rest of the day’s walk hoping that Jess was going to be ok.

Our minds gradually returned to our surroundings; there is another great stretch of Wall along Cawfield Crags, including a milecastle that was built on quite a slope. It made me wonder if the Romans serving in the milecastle lived in barracks with slanting floors?

At Cawfields Quarry we stopped to use the public loos and read the information board about the quarry. A fair amount of Wall was lost to quarrying at this location and othersand the bit of Wall that currently seems to teeter above the water at Cawfields really just illustrates how dramatically quarrying alters the landscape.

As we rounded the corner and headed towards Great Chesters fort, the wind was really pushing against us and it made for hard going. As we were running late, we didn’t stop to investigate Great Chesters even though the guidebook promised a Roman altar stone for going out of our way.

Location of Great Chesters fort, not much to see

We just kept going. Before reaching Walltown Crags we stopped in the lee of the stone field walls to get out of the wind and have a quick snack.

At Walltown Crags we took the lower path as the one along the wall was not very clear, and it kept us out of the worst of the wind. We also missed out on a bit of climbing and descending of crags and a turret, but we could only take so much struggling against the wind. We did rejoin the heights where we met up with a volunteer ranger who was patrolling the area and he stopped to chat for a bit. He left us with the encouraging words that our planned lunch stop was less than half an hour away.

Remains of the Wall on Walltown Crags

We quickly descended the crags and waved goodbye to them at Walltown Quarry. This quarry has been attractively turned into a country park and has a little cafe with public toilets. We didn’t stop for long, as our intended stop for the afternoon was just around the corner.

Walltown Quarry

The Roman Army Museum occupies the site of Carvoran Roman Fort, though from a very quick look around outside we didn’t see any visible remains. As the museum is owned by the Vindolanda Trust, we had purchased combined tickets when we were at Vindolanda. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this site, I had not been here before and the premise of a museum dedicated to the Roman Army didn’t automatically seem like something I would enjoy. Having said that, the experience was great! This site has also had a lot of Lottery money pumped into it and all of the flashy audiovisuals are clearly aimed at the younger crowd but are still enjoyable for those of us that are older. The jewel in the crown is the 3D film, ‘The Edge of the Empire’ about military life on the Wall, which is well done and engaging. Full marks as well go to the video attempting to explain the makeup of the various Roman Army divisions such as legions and cohorts. Favourite object at this site is the remains of a helmet crest that was found at Vindolanda. We also had lunch at the cafe, and it was much the same as at Vindolanda. I had soup, others had sandwiches and sweets.

We had to get going before we were really finished looking around the museum, but we were booked in for dinner at 7pm at our B&B so had less time to dawdle. We had had a text from Jess to let us know she had arrived safely and was being well taken care of.

We retraced our steps to the Walltown Quarry car park and rejoined the path, heading west over fields, with the wind still blowing in our face, but we were happy to be off the crags. We passed over a peaceful stream and arrived at the ruined remains of Thirlwall Castle, another legacy of the time of the border reivers and built of Wall stone.

Thirlwall Castle

Then came a short bit of walking along a busy road, followed by more field walking, passing a couple of farms to reach the first turn-off to Gilsland.

Walking in the Roman ditch

As we were staying near the western edge of the town so we kept on the path a bit longer. We went down the steps to cross the Poltross Burn next to an imposing railway viaduct and climbed up the other side to find the remains of a milecastle. We spent a few minutes exploring it, and then continuing until the path met another road.

Milecastle

We found Brookside Villa without any difficulty and were warmly welcomed. Jess had been relaxing, alternating cold and hot compresses for her ankle that Denise had kindly supplied. We had a twin room and a triple room both of which were clean and comfortable with nice touches like fancy toiletries. As we arrived a bit later than anticipated, once we were all in, we were presented with a dinner menu. Some of us opted for starters, while I chose to save room for dessert! We had a fantastic meal washed down with a bottle of wine from the serve yourself bar. Dessert is well worth saving room for! Before heading upstairs to relax before bed, we were faced with selecting the next day’s breakfast from a bewildering list of choices, but it was a nice change from the standard full English.

Had a quick chat with John, my husband, to let him know all was welland to find out that all was well at home. He even managed a trick to call me on Skype three ways with my Mom from Canada so we could all have a catch-up!

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