Summer Holiday 2020: Day 2

Housesteads Roman Fort, Walltown Quarry Country Park & Haltwhistle

After breakfasts and showers we headed put for a full day of exploring Hadrian’s Wall and some of the surrounding countryside.

First on the day’s agenda was Housesteads Roman Fort. Lying midway along Hadrian’s Wall, it’s the most complete example of a Roman fort in Britain, and one of the best-known from the entire Roman Empire. It was built within a decade of AD 122, when work on the Wall began, and was garrisoned by an 800-strong infantry regiment until the end of the 4th century.

We all had a great time exploring the remains of the fort, visiting the museum as well, before we took a little walk, west along the remains of the wall. It was a bit of a windy day and at one point it was all the girls could do to stand up in the wind; Shelli and I cunningly took shelter behind the wall!

After a packed lunch back at the camper we headed along the B6318 to Walltown Quarry Country Park.

Walltown Quarry was opened in 1876 and was the largest ‘whinstone quarry’ on Hadrian’s Wall, producing huge quantities of road chippings. Now, it’s a lovely place to take a walk and see a bit more of the wall.

We headed out to the Peace Labyrinth, created from thousands of willow plants in 20 different colours. It was designed by artists Glynis Rose and Ruth Gowland and planted in 2011. To be honest though, it wasn’t as much a labyrinth as a path that wound through the plants, not needing you to think about how to get to the centre at all!

That done we walked around the country park and along the wall for a bit, exploring the Walltown Crags and taking in the views, before heading back to the car park.

Needing to get some supplies in we then headed into Haltwhistle to find a shop and to take a little stroll round.

There isn’t really a great deal to Haltwhistle, something I remembered from my stay there on my LEJOG walk, but we all had our photos taken at the Centre of Britain signpost and a refreshing drink in the Black Bull Inn.

Supplies bought it was back to the campsite for dinner and to chill out.

Photos

The Good Camera

Darren’s iPhone

Shelli’s iPhone