- Start: East Wallhouses
- Finish: Newcastle Quayside
- Distance: 27.27 km
- Time: 08:44:45
This morning was all about the ‘Military Road’ or the B6318 as it’s more formally known.
It runs from Greenhead, where we stayed on day 3 of the trip, to Heddon-on-the-wall and we have run across it fairly often in the course of our walk but since yesterday we have more or less just been walking along it.
The road was built in the 1750’s with the express purpose of improving troop movements in the borders, hence ‘military road’, as the British soldiers attempting to suppress the Jacobites who supported Bonnie Prince Charlie had been having a hard time of it.
The engineers who built the road discovered that not only did Hadrians wall provide them with a good route to follow, at least once it came down from the crags, it also provided ample amounts of building stone! Which is why we have not been seeing much in the way of extant stone wall for the last day or so.
That was certainly true this morning as we trekked alongside the road for several hours.
We saw some interesting birds at the Whittle Dene Reservoir Ponds, though they didn’t hang around to be photographed!
and some very interesting animals who couldn’t run away at Harlow hill,
but there was very little evidence of the Wall at all!
It was not until we reached Heddon-on-the-Wall that we found some, the last we are likely to see before we get to Segedunum (Wallsend) tomorrow.
This was a good big section and quite impressive, if you haven’t seen all the rest of it!
This afternoon we left the hills behind and descended down to the river, having lunch next to an old ferry station.
After lunch we began the long trek into the city, learning about Newcastle’s lost industrial past as we went.
Finally, after what seemed a very long day, though it is only the second longest this trip, we arrived within sight of the iconic bridges,
With a very good view of them from our hotel window!
Having somehow failed to appreciate that we might find it difficult to find a restaurant on a Friday night in Newcastle without pre-booking 😢, we ended up at Cote Brasserie, which was reliable, if unexciting.
Tomorrow we have the short haul from the Quayside to Wallsend to achieve and then we are done!!