The journey has begun

I am just sitting here at Edmonton airport on a late Saturday afternoon waiting to catch my flight to Calgary where I will connect to London Heathrow. I am off to Newcastle on Tyne to walk Hadrians Wall. Hadrian's wall was built across the north of England in 122 AD at the farthest reaches of the empire to keep the Scots out of England. The wall is fairly well preserved in the middle segments but was essentially dismantled at the west and east ends which were more heavily populated and disassembled the wall for building materials. Supposedly it is very scenic along the wall and there are lots of Roman ruins, museums and excavations. Before COVID I had taken a free online course from Newcastle University about Hadrians Wall. I had planned to hike the wall in May 2020 but of course that never happened. I am doing this solo. So many of my friends and family members have developed mobility issues that I thought that I should embark on this journey sooner rather than later. It is incredible to think that 3 years has elapsed since my last trip to hike the West Highland Way. I guess one can chalk things up to COVID.

My plan for the trip is as follows. Tomorrow I will connect on to Newcastle on a British Airways flight. I will stay in Newcastle for 2 nights. There is supposedly a good Roman museum at Wallsend on the east coast just outside of Newcastle that I would like to visit.
Tuesday I will take the train to Carlisle where I will stay a night before walking east four days along the Hadrians Wall trail back towards Newcastle staying in a variety of accommodation along the way. I won't walk all of the way back to Newcastle as there isn't any wall left around Newcastle and one merely spends alot of time hiking through an industrial part of town. My last stop on the wall is in Chollerford. After I finish hiking the wall I head to Durham a UNESCO heritage town an hour train ride south of Newcastle for a night before heading down to London for five nights before heading home. There are looking rail strikes on Oct 1, 5 and 8 so hopefully I won't run into any problems. I have already changed my last night's stay to be closer to Gatwick airport which I will be flying out of on Oct 8.

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