In a few days (as of this writing) I’ll be leaving my lovely home in Portugal and making my way to the wilds of northern England, not-so-coincidentally along the border of Scotland, to begin a two-week walk along Hadrian’s Wall. I’ll be starting in Newcastle upon Tyne, hugging the eastern coast of England along the North Sea. I basically put my feet in the sand, turn west, and start walking. Thing is, I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I don’t do religious pilgrimages, I don’t even participate in charity 5k run/walks. This in no way fits the “John” profile. So just what the #*@(! am I doing?

Good question.

I don’t know when I first heard of it, but I know I first saw Hadrian’s Wall in early May of 2012. It was a sight-seeing stop in the early days of our honeymoon – we were married about a week at the time – and I just loved everything about it. We went to Houseteads, which is probably the best-preserved bit of the entire Wall at this point, and really enjoyed poking around for awhile. And while we were poking around, we noticed that people were approaching the fort from a direction other than that parking area. In fact, they were coming out of what we thought was the wilderness on the other side of the fort! And this is when we heard about the Hadrian’s Wall Path for the first time.

What that is, is a “National Trail” maintained by Great Britain, one of many such trails maintained by the State for the benefit of everyone. I didn’t know much about it at the time beyond the fact of its existence, but something about the hills and the ambiance and… just the romance of the honeymoon maybe?… anyway I said, out loud to my blushing bride, “I’m going to come back here and walk this when I’m 50.”

WHAT??

See, I turned 40 a little more than a week after the wedding. In other words, I would be turning 40 the day after this visit, and I think the whole sense of time passing, life changing etc… just stirred something in me. At the time, it just made sense; set a goal for my 50th year that would require me to maintain some amount of fitness and discipline, plus it would be an adventure worth an iconic anniversary. That being said, the romance of the notion papered over ideas like “I’ve never been particularly fit,” “I’ve never done the least bit of hiking”, and “I have no clue what this would actually encompass.” “I’ve never even walked a 5k.” PHAW, those would be problems for another day. Besides, anybody who knows me knows that I say stupid/whimsical shit all the time! This was no big deal.

The weird thing was, though, that this stuck. Year after year went by, and I would still occasionally think “I’ll be getting ready for the walk in few years.” “I should probably start losing weight if I’m going to make it across England.” That sort of thing. The montage of calendar pages flew past, and I never quite dropped the idea of it. That said, in my 49th year we decided to up and move to Portugal, so spending any energy on the idea of another big project was just ridiculous. There was also this big trip we planned for shortly after we arrived in Portugal as sort of a reward/incentive to ourselves for COVID got in the way of doing this in my actual 50th year, and there was a false start the year after that, but schedules conspired this year so that Lisa and I would be separated at the end of May anyway, so it seemed like the opportunity to do something on my own had presented itself.

And so, a few months ago, I set my pedometer thingy to 10,000 steps. Then, a week later, I set it to 11,000. And every week after that if I succeeded in hitting the goal at least 5 out of 7 days, I added another thousand. Just before we left for Marrakech my benchmark was 24,000 steps a day, which – according to a combination of napkin-backs and the internet – seems to be the median distance I’ll be walking on my chosen route. I’ve done a reasonable amount of research on how to be prepared and have equipped myself appropriately. In a bittersweet turn, my recently deceased father-in-law gifted me a nice set of walking poles many years back when he heard about my hiking goal; an incredibly thoughtful gift, showing that he was paying attention when we spoke. I’ve used them a little on my practice walks and I expect to get good use out of them very soon.

As I finish writing this blog post I am on a train taking me from Leeds (where my flight from Porto landed) to Newcastle, where the beginning of the Hadrian’s Wall path is. Tomorrow morning I’m setting off, to discover if hiking is my new passion or, just possibly, I hate it. Fingers crossed!

I have a weird sense of writing about the next couple days, largely because we’ve done it before. Not just traveling to the places, but even blogging about it. Here, on this very site. Well, kind of. (We used to call this “Sasha’s Doghouse” and here’s a pro-tip for aspiring blogger types – don’t name your blog after a pet who will eventually pass away, unless you want an increasingly obscure title that you’ll have to explain to people.) That said, the people we were on our honeymoon vs. the people we are today are almost completely different ones, measured however you like. Add in two brand new people to the trip… I mean, new to the place, we didn’t abduct two babies… and it was like introducing my friends to an old acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in years only without embarrassing childhood stories I wished they hadn’t remembered.

Back it up a bit. We had the good sense to lay in provisions the night before, so we had a good night’s sleep timed entirely to when our friends felt human again after their flight; it was still only mid-morning so no problem-o. Lisa had done her usual fantastic job on finding lodging and in the morning we got a better look at the village of Bellingham. People there probably aren’t keen on words like “quaint” but it’s the first one that comes to mind – a small neighborhood serviced by a clutch of businesses and several taverns. It also hugs a small nationally-protected park so it’s even more lovely then usual.

Pastry nibbles and coffee and we were on the road, following the pretty simple directions (there are only but so many roads in this stretch of country). In less than half an hour we were in the carpark for Housesteads Roman Fort.

As Lisa likes to explain it (and she’s not wrong), the Romans moved up through Britain, just a-conquering away, until they reached the southern fringe of what is now Scotland. They took one look at the Scots and said “nah, we’re good.” (The Scots, meanwhile, were consumed with the eternal conflict between them and their mortal enemies, the Scots. (ba-dum-dum!)) And so it was that during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, a wall was constructed, 73 miles long and stretching from one coast to the other, an impenetrable barrier separating Roman society from those they deemed barbarians. It was a monumental defensive structure or, as the Chinese would have called it if they ever saw it, “a fence.” Because the Wall is made out of the same stuff the Saxons (and later the Normans and so on…) make their little-w walls out of, and those walls are critically important to the sheeps industry, once the Romans receded from Britain the locals made extensive use out of all that beautiful pre-cut stone that was thoughtfully left all stacked up for them. As a result, while you can certainly follow the path of the Wall, there are plenty of stretches that are only vaguely observable – mostly as the furrow in the ground left by other hikers, honestly.

Housesteads is not just the Wall, though. Along the Wall were regularly spaced watch towers and, less frequently, garrison forts for the men stationed at this Northern outpost. Housesteads is the remnant of one of those forts. It doesn’t look all that different from the numerous archaeological sites that you might visit in Italy, Greece, or Turkey (to pick three examples). What makes it really stand out is that… well, it’s in the rolling green hills of the Borders. So, we ramble (woo, drink!) through the foundations of barracks and bathrooms and the palatial quarters of the commanding officer, and read signs about how the army conducted itself, and meanwhile there are flocks of sheeps just grazing away. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it’s a heluva experience. Put it this way: I spent a day here in 2012 and spent the next 10 years talking about coming back to hike the wall. If you’ve ever met me, you know that this is not my usual idea of a good time. Until then, “take a hike” had only been in my vernacular as outdated slang.

A day amongst the rocks and sheeps worked up quite an appetite, so we made for the Battlesteads Hotel for what promised to be a lovely meal. Well… promise broken. Nobody takes pleasure in belaboring a bad time, so it doesn’t need a blow-by-blow breakdown. And also, maybe it was just a bad night? What it boiled down to is that we were attracted to the place by a very promising-looking menu with creative presentations of local specialties. Unfortunately, everything was just… meh. Like, it wasn’t an “F” meal, but they really set themselves up as an “A+” experience and the whole thing was like… “B-/C”. So, not awful but we all know how the expectations game is played, right? Still, it couldn’t put a real damper on what had been a lovely day, and back we went to our digs. Tomorrow would be an even more robust site… hubba hubba.