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Veni vidi vici

September - October 2022
A 15-day adventure by Cheryl Read more
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  • TravelerVeni vidi vici
    Day 1

    The journey has begun

    September 24, 2022 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 18 °C

    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.

    I don't think Finding Penguins gives notifications with each post so I will encourage everyone following this Blog to check in every few days.

    Rob    Read more

  • TravelerVeni vidi vici
    Day 3

    Newcastle

    September 26, 2022 in England ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C

    I made it to Newcastle as planned. Edmonton-Calgary-London Heathrow-Newcastle. It was 18 hours from when my first flight. I slept more than I thought I would on the transatlantic flight but Leighla the eight year in the seat beside me kept kicking me. She and her mother were off to Oxford to join up with their father who was training on flight simulators for the new Cormorant helicopter. They were otherwise quite charming and had left Comox 10 hours earlier than I had so I could forgive Leighla. By the time I got to Newcastle it was dark. The train trip was easy however walking around in downtown Newcastle to find my hotel using Google maps was a little unnerving. I looked left rather than right once while crossing the road and came close to being hit by a car. I have been more careful since. The hotel is very nice and quiet so I had a good first night.

    During my travels yesterday I noticed that the soles of both my hiking boots were coming detached. There was no way they would last the trip. I found a shoe repair place and headed there first thing this morning. I dropped them off and they were ready by the afternoon. That was a relief as I think it would have been a challenge doing the hike in running shoes.

    My main priority for Newcastle was to visit Segedunum the Roman fort at Wallsend near the mouth of the Tyne river. They had talked alot about it in the online course I had taken. I enjoyed walking around the excavations and the gallery but the less passionate may have not enjoyed as much. Mr toilet paper holder man who is travelling with me got very excited as they had stones from a Roman latrine they had excavated in the museum. It was the highlight for him. He wanted a selfie. What was very odd, if one get over the oddness of travelling with the pathology departments toilet paper holder is that 2 people who saw me take the photo came up and showed me their travel companions. No toilet paper roll covers. They actually suggested that when in London I should go to the Victoria and Albert museum to get a photo with an original Crapper toilet. Mr TPHM is not running the trip. It is about the experience not the Instagram photo.

    We headed off to Tynemouth on the coast afterwards on the recommendation of another seat mate. There are the ruins of a monastery on a point looking out at the ocean. Tynemouth was a pretty village and the monastery and views of the ocean were very beautiful. Well worth the visit.

    After picking up the hiking boots, we headed downtown for a stroll around. We took in the Laing gallery, a pleasant little gallery with some great paintings by artists unknown to me. We then headed down to river to check out the castle, the cathedral and walk back to the hotel along the river.

    Tomorrow we off to Carlisle.    Read more

  • TravelerVeni vidi vici
    1
    Day 4

    Carlisle

    September 27, 2022 in England ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C

    I had a pretty busy day today. The only thing that I had left to do in Newcastle was visit the Hancock museum. The Hancock museum had also figured prominently in the on line course that I had taken. It was good to go and check out some of the items that they had discussed. These items can be broken down into items made of stone-think temple stones, grave markers or markers to celebrate Roman individuals or small items that were lost. It has been almost a thousand years since Roman times so what would you expect. It is interesting how much information can be extrapolated from such materials. They also had some bronze age stuff- think bog People and some Angle Saxon stuff which I took in. The rest of the museum was a Natural Science museum which I had sworn off this summer after visiting the Natural Science museum in Ottawa this summer. I did get sucked into looking at the stuff.

    I didn't dally too long at the museum as I had to go back to the hotel get my luggage and catch the 1:30 train to Carlisle. I wanted to use the English Heritage pass to get free entrance into the Carlisle castle. The train ride was very pleasant once we got away from Industrial Newcastle.

    The Carlisle castle keep looked very much like our legislature in Alberta as it was covered in Plastic wrap for renovations. I have a theory about visiting castles. They look alot better from the outside as from the inside. I wandered around a little on the inside and on the battlements but there wasn't a whole lot to see.

    Carlisle is a pretty provincial town with many of the buildings made with Red stone. I have been having phone problems. I bought a Sim card off of Amazon from a third party. The card said 5G but was truly only 2G. I could get data but not voice which I will need to call a taxi today. I stopped at a phone shop. It took the woman in the shop 15 minutes but she finally figured out the Sim card was data only. She sold me another card and I am all good to go.

    Supper last night was Thai. I asked for spicy and was it ever spicy.

    I experienced the energy shortage at my B and B in Carlisle. They didn't turn the heat on but fortunately I had a very heavy Duvet and blanket.    Read more

  • TravelerVeni vidi vici
    111
    Day 5

    Bucolic Day in Northumbria

    September 28, 2022 in England ⋅ ⛅ 6 °C

    I finally started my hike today. I was away by 8:15 and walked from Carlisle to Walton probably about 18 km in about 4.5 hours with a 15 minute break for lunch. Incredibly it was sunny and not too hot. A beautiful day to walk in the countryside. It was very beautiful and bucolic. The terrain reminded me much of Southwestern Ontario where I grew up but it felt very English. The trail goes through farms so there were many sheep and cattle and all the birds were singing. Everything was happy. It was a good day to be alive. Leaving Carlisle there were dog walkers but no hikers. I must have walked 2 hours before catching up with a seniors group from Newcastle. 12 women and 3 men. I didn't ask them where all the other men were. It would have depressed me. To this point I hadn't seen any evidence of anything Roman. The path supposedly followed a Roman military road which I could imagine as it was straight and a little raised even in the farmers fields. The map that I am using showed the course of the vallum which was a large ditch the Romans had built behind the wall but unless I really used my imagination I really couldn't see it. I couldn't see the wall. The seniors confirmed my impression. There was no wall or anything Roman to be seen but they did agree that with the sun it was spectacularly beautiful. After I left the seniors I think I only met several other hikers. I made it to Walton a small village by 1 o'clock and went to the Reading room and tea room. It was like I had stepped onto the set of East Ender's but there was no alcohol and they were Northumbrian. The place was packed with the locals young and old all visiting gossiping with each other. I had a apricot cake desert and tea and waited for my taxi to pick me up and take me to Brampton for the night. Mr TPHM begged off today with excuses of a sore knee so he stayed in the luggage which was transferred to my next hotel by a luggage service He was having a drink at the bar when I arrived but told me he had had a good day catching on some journal articles he had put off reading.Read more

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