Our 14.8 mile walk from Heddon-on-the-Wall to Corbridge yesterday took us through lovely countryside of rolling hills and working farms. The weather was cool, mostly sunny, and always windy.

Although we walked on the fringes of pastures and wheat fields, the path runs adjacent to Military Road connecting Newcastle in the east with Carlisle in the west. At first puzzled about why we would be walking alongside a modern road, it turned out that Military Road is largely built on the ruins of Hadrian’s wall.

A well-traveled road today, the history of Military Road dates back to 1751 when an Act of Parliament allowed the road to be built with the Roman wall as its foundation for the transport of military equipment.

Walking south of Military Road, remnants of Hadrian’s Wall are still visible in some places:

Stones form the foundation for the road, which lies just beyond the fence.

Original Roman stones have been amply repurposed and combined with “modern” building materials for many uses including the stone walls that border pastures and fields (quotations used because much of this material is also quite old by present-day standards).

We often found ourselves scaling these stone walls using some innovative techniques provided by the keepers of the trail.

Today we begin our walk to Chollerford with a visit to the nearby excavated remains of a Roman town.

A ceramics kiln outside of Corbridge
A relic in Corbridge, a town established by Romans.
Our lodging