And Hadrian caused a wall to be built…

After the school run, taking my final homeward turning I was subjected to subliminal reminders of the former extent of empire thanks to a florid highways department sign – ‘Hadrian’s Wall Country’.  However, so ubiquitous was this signage one could be forgiven for placing Britain’s largest World Heritage Site and ‘top ancient monument’, according to USA Today, in the same category as Chessington World of Adventures.  Locals are often most culpable when it comes to ignoring their history and as such, one snowy winter day a while ago, the snowiest for 18 years, I decided to remind myself of Hadrian’s AD122 grand design…

Dry air, clear blue skies and bright sunshine are more common accompaniments to a day in rural Northumberland than you might think, though as my continuing attachment to a venerable 4×4, itself worthy of UNESCO designation on account of great age and remarkable preservation, so too are blankets of snow and freezing temperatures.  Never having warmed to ‘sympathetic’ reconstructions or over interpreting information centres, particularly those solely designed to terminally corral visitors in the gift shop, my favourite stretch of Roman Wall is a place where landscape and stone tell their own story without embellishment.

Heading west from Chollerford, following black tracks on an icy white road, I’m soon into open country.  Known hereabouts as ‘the military’ road’, the B6318’s directness suggests a Roman survey but in reality this epithet dates from its construction centuries later, following the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion – Hadrian simply assisted by stacking a handy source of hardcore nearby…

Taking a right turn at the Twice Brewed Inn, once is never quite enough in these parts, it’s a short switchback ascent to discover amidst the wild and rugged uplands, the slightly surprising Steel Rigg pay-and-display car park.  It’s £1 for the whole day, so I pay up, park up and banish the insidious bony finger of revenue collection from my mind, before striding out, sinister, dexter in the footsteps of the legions.  Though as already noted, early examples of recycling have seen its height diminished, the short 3-mile stretch from Steel Rigg to Housesteads Fort is amongst the best preserved of the wall’s 73-mile extent.  As such, no fanciful computer generated displays are required to fuel the imagination, and the sense of excitement inherent at all frontiers is still palpable after almost two millennia. If ever a place cried out to demark the most northerly outpost of empire, this is it.

Taking the path down from the car park, even careful steps find snow deeper than my gaiters, allowing the occasionally refreshing sensation of melting ice to permeate my boots – at least I’m not wearing sandals.  My mobile phone starts to chime insistently, at odds with the location and the day.  I turn it off.  Soon the few preceding footprints take a right fork away from Hadrian’s line, around the southern slopes of the of the crag.  In contrast and in characteristically unflinching Roman style, the wall stays true to the ridge’s highest point and so must I.

Ascending steeply, kicking my toes into fresh snow, I seek out each firm footing and haul myself up.  At the milecastle atop the crags of Steel Rigg it’s definitely time to stop walking and take in the view – a combination of the two activities being far too risky.  West towards Winshields Crags and East to Hotbank Crags, across brilliant snow-covered sheep pasture, the plates of the Earth’s surface have ruptured.  To the south, land slopes away steadily, whilst to the north, moorland tumbles off a precipice in an abrupt sawtooth of crags and cliffs that form an eminently defensible natural frontier – geologically known as the Whin Sill.  Looking tentatively down at the frozen blue waters of Crag Lough 150ft below and then towards the wild country beyond the rule of empire and law, at least that’s how it was in AD 122, it’s hard to envisage a Pictish assault proving more than a bee sting on the rump of a rhinoceros.  As the sun is already low and starting to glow with a purplish winter light I finish my coffee and Christmas cake combination and crack on.

A quick descent through drifts of freezing snow leads to Sycamore Gap.  Yes, Kevin Costner’s mid-Atlantic Robin Hood climbed this now famous tree and my kids have tried too.  Ready to step into the breach, a young sapling grows nearby, defended within a circular sheep-proof wall.  The snow ahead is pristine and deep enough to reveal little of the track save that it’s upwards again in a symmetrically breathless manner.  I regain the ridge, continuing towards a small patch of woodland which leads down to the bucolic encampment of Hotbank Farm.   At this point I’m starting to wonder whether snowshoes might have been a good investment.  In the absence of a peripatetic purveyor of this highly functional, though somehow irredeemably ridiculous, footwear the question remains unanswered.  Gaining height with some considerable effort and aiming for Hotbank Crags, the drifted snow close to the wall proves too deep to negotiate.  I have visions of disappearing beneath the surface to be later discovered in the Spring defrost like a lost fishfinger.

However, a little lower down, a strand of hillside swept clean by the wind offers easy progress.  The light is starting to fade fast now and the temperature is dropping – I’m starting to run, well almost.  Over the brow of the next ridge I can see Housesteads Fort.  The site is deserted but I’ve no time to search out English Heritage’s unintentional humour – a sign proudly proclaiming ‘Bathhouse, initially unheated, later heated’ – and consider whether the Romans in Northumberland pondered long and hard over the upgrade…  I doubt it.  My arrival is timely, as a friendly-looking Wright Bros bus, no relation to the flyers, pulls into Housesteads empty car park, and upon ungrudging payment of another £1, it was going my way.

For a concentrated reminder of Britain’s place in the ancient world and to experience one of England’s enduring wild landscapes, don’t just talk the talk – carpe diem and walk the wall.

More: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/hadrians-wall/