We slackpacked today, a hiking term for carrying only a small pack. Since I did not sleep well last night, I was happy to travel lightly.
We took the bus to Once Brewed, so named if going eastward, but named Twice Brewed if coming from the west. From the visitor center, we clopped on tarmac for about a mile to get onto the Hadrian’s Wall Path.
The cold winds (never hitting 60 F) made my nose dribble all day. We climbed the highest point, Winshield Crag, where there is a geological survey marker. (See left.)
Today’s excursion was strenuous with lots of steep climbs and descents, which I find scary. Dennis almost runs downhill while I place my feet with care and hang on to whatever I can–even a blade of grass provides me assurance. I fear banging my sore knee or tripping and falling on it. Though the gash from the bicycle fall has healed, the knee is very sensitive to bumping.
The size of the wall is difficult to imagine. The picture on the left below shows how wide the wall can be (about 8 to 10 feet), while the photo on the right shows how high it was–imagine it with the gap filled, creating a wall stretching from the top of the rocks on the lower left to the top of the wall on the hill, perhaps 20 or 30 feet high.
The lower left picture shows the base of a turret, while the one on the right shows the ruins of a milecastle. Each small fort was spaced a mile apart and had a turret a half mile before and after it, and these stretched along the wall all across the Scotland-England border. Originally, historians thought the purpose of the wall was defense; now the thinking is that it was a way to control flow of goods into the country while applying a tariff or tax–a sort of toll road.
