John and I have been talking about walking the the Hadrian’s Wall path for a while now. It’s a big part of the local history, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and just kind of a neat thing to do. Plus they’ve managed to gamify it by having the museums on the route sell little ‘passports’ which you can get stamped along the way!

Its a popular, relatively easy hike, but not short – 135km from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, so we are doing it in sections. We started in Wallsend, which has the advantage of being accessible by Metro. We got to Segedunum Roman Fort just as it opened on Saturday morning, picked up our passports and an official guide, and set off. Almost before leaving the museum grounds we spotted a discrepancy between the guide and the physical world, the last revision being from 2016. But it was solid aside from that, and this bit of the walk is pretty urban, running along the Tyne and through the Newcastle quayside, plus of course there are plenty of signposts and we have out phone maps.

Most of the guides break the route into six sections, and the bit from Wallsend traditionally ends 24km in, at Heddon-on-the-Wall. We had already decided to end two kilometeres earlier at Newburn, since there is a bus back to Newcastle from there and a convenient pub for a celebratory pint. This turned out to be exactly the right decision, 22km was plenty for our first hike.

Hike number two till there will wait for some cooler weather, but I can say this felt like a successful start. I suspect the next sections will have fewer ice cream vans and pizza restaurants on the way, but I’m really looking forward to seeing a bit of the countryside on the next section.