Newcastle,England

 Time to head out from York.  On the train to Newcastle at 8am.  First class section mostly empty for the ride of a little over an hour  

More beautiful farmland on a gorgeous day. Who said the UK was always dreary?

Pretty red clover.

And a few quaint looking little towns as well. 

Lots of familiar city names from NC!

Approaching Newcastle, bridges over the River Tyne. 

And the view on the street outside the train station.  We dropped off our bags at the hotel and headed right back out on a train to Haltwhistle.  This was to set us up to spend the day hiking on Hadrian’s Wall, Roman ruins. 

At the Haltwhistle station. 

We set out right away heading towards Housesteads on foot.  More beautiful countryside and views. 

Lots of sheep!!

Farmhouse out on the open rolling hills. 

Lots of stone walls for fencing. (Not Roman walls yet)

The trail was about 3 miles to the wall at Cawfields and Milecastle thru what appeared to be private land marked as “public footpath”. 

The quarry at Cawfields.  

This is the artist interpretation of what the tower at Milecastle might have looked. 

You can imagine this from the remaining foundations. 

The real awesomeness was the wall itself. This, of course is just a small portion of the 73 miles of wall that the Romans used to protect themselves from the northern native Caledonians.  Built in about 100AD.

 

We walked up and down and up and down….for hours. 

I know it doesn't look that steep, but this portion of the wall is particularly hilly.  

Stopped for a selfie. Couldn’t quite get the wall behind us correctly so redid the shot. You can’t see it, but we’re hot and sweaty…

We were going to hike all the way to Housesteads ruins, but stopped about 3 miles short at the Sill….feet were just a bit tired!  Stopped for a local beer at Twice Brewed brewery.   Hopped on the AD122 local bus for a relaxing drive back to the Haltwhistle Station. 

Caught the first train back to Newcastle   

It was a Northern line train and was very nice.  This is not first class, only standard available on this train. We snagged a table so very comfy. 

Just a cool looking farmhouse out the window of the train.  

 The totals from the Fitbit watch - 25,000 steps, 8.5 miles and 287 floors!