Distance: 24 miles
Ascent: 1150m
Weather: Rain
Dipper, swans, housemartin flying in and out of nest
Wild strawberry, Orchids
Moments of bog related anxiety: 3
Bunnies: 2
Path uncertainty: a bit
We rejoined the Vallum this morning, it was liberally coated in sheep poo, and followed the Hadrian's Wall national trail for the morning. It took a bit longer than I was expecting, because it is considerably harder going than I expected. There are a lot of ups and downs, quite steep in places. The sight of the wall leading over the crags in the clouds into the distance was very impressive.
We briefly stopped at Walltown, which was an old quarry - where they dug out the dolerite to make roads again, this time taking part of the wall as well. This went on until the 1940s when someone noticed and put a stop to it.
The Pennine Way has been moved up to join the Hadrian's Wall path, it used to run along what is now marked on the map as The Roman Military Way. That is lower, and has less ascent, but no doubt is boggy.
We turned off north at Turret 37A and were immediately welcomed back to the Pennine Way with a muddy hillside down into a cow field with some ankle deep 'bog' water to wade through. And thus it began.
We alternated between moors (Bog) and forestry tracks (wet) and eventually made it to a road. Not necessarily the right road, but it was solid so we walked along it. The Way caught up with us very soon, and we crossed some farmland, with some slightly upset cows, down to a little stream that was quite a torrent, and had to jump over it. It was wide but manageable.
The last few fields into Bellingham were wet but the path was quite clear, right up until we realised that the signposts on the ground are different from the map, so we followed the old route into town.
We are staying at The Cheviot Hotel, which has fine porter and fine burgers and hopefully the roof won't leak on our heads during the night.
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