‘I slept in ditches and dreamed of marauding raiders’: a wild walk on the Hadrian’s Wall path

12.10.2023 - 21:37 / theguardian.com / emperor Hadrian / Charles Iii III (Iii)

Hadrian’s Wall has perhaps the most single-minded personality of all the National Trails, tracing as it does the 84 miles from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend, which represented the north-west frontier of the Roman empire for nearly 300 years. It was built by the Roman army (the soldiers dug the ditches, quarried the stones and laid them) on the orders of the emperor Hadrian after his visit to Britain in AD 122.

The Hadrian’s Wall path celebrates its 20th birthday this year. I’ve now walked all 17 National Trails, including the Coast to Coast path and King Charles III England coast path (officially opening in 2024 and 2025 respectively). I’m not sure why it took me so long to get round to walking the Hadrian’s Wall trail; perhaps it was a perception that it was too busy or that there was too much road walking. All my concerns proved unfounded.

I undertook the walk in the same style as my 6,800-mile walk around the coast of Britain, The Perimeter: carrying 15kg of camera and camping gear, primarily wild camping (pitching late, leaving early and staying out of sight) with a few nights in a hostel or B&B to clean and charge up.

‘The wall was built from east to west, but I’d decided to go west to east so the prevailing wind was behind me and my load of camera and camping gear’

Throughout the route, there’s such a wealth of archaeological remains that it’s impossible to ignore the Roman influence, even away from the central section where the wall is most impressive and intact.

The trail starts in the expansive landscape by the Solway Firth near Anthorn Radio Station, a matrix of antennae and cables that crisscross the sky like a line drawing, used to communicate with submerged submarines and to transmit the UK’s time reference signal. It seems this landscape is destined to be marked by structures of control.

At Bowness-on-Solway, the system of ditches and wall met coastal forts that stretched along the Cumbrian coast and prevented the wall from being outflanked by sea. Although the Ordnance Survey map evocatively states “Hadrian’s Wall (Course of)” and “Vallum (Course of)”, I found it hard to make out anything on the ground. At this point, the Scottish border is only a few miles away; it’s historically an ambiguous and lawless land – home of the Reivers, the band of raiders who marauded along the frontier from the 13th to 17th centuries, conceivably set in motion by the Romans. As a result, many farmhouses here are fortified – more castle than home.

The path follows the River Eden to Carlisle past the imposing Norman keep. Historically, this is a lawless land. As a border stronghold between two kingdoms, the castle has been besieged 10 times – more than any other place in Britain

After leaving the expanse of