Hadrian’s Wall

In October 2023, My mom Lynn, and my sisters Cassie and Sammie, and I walked Hadrian’s Wall, a very different walk compared to the Camino (which Sammi and I walked in 2019).

You can find day to day details from our trip below; here are a few notes and recommendations if you’re planning on walking the wall yourself:

Eating along Hadrian’s Wall

Trail Snacks

The Hadrian’s Wall path is very much through empty countryside, with very few villages, restaurants, vending machines, etc., along the way. We didn’t realize this, so though we did buy a few good snacks at a grocery store in Carlisle the first day, that was the last grocery store we saw for the rest of the walk. There are some really well-stocked Snack Huts along the way, sometimes with kettles to boil water and cup-of-soup kind of stuff, which are terrific.
If I was doing it again, I’d do a better job of stocking up before the walk began on good hiking snacks like fruit, nuts, and trail mix.

Dinner and Lunch

Wherever you stop for the night, chances are there are 1-2 local restaurants nearby, sometimes directly attached to your accommodations, but that’s it. Some of the restaurants offer a packed-lunch service, which is terrific. My sister are vegetarians, and overall I think they had decent options – ??

Water

There are occasional drinking water refill stations, though nothing like on the Camino; because we had pretty rainy, overcast weather (October), we didn’t need as much water as we have on other walks, but it’s something to keep in mind as you start out every day – especially if you’ve got sunny weather

Walking Days & Terrain

Terrain

The terrain along the Hadrian’s Wall path is much more varied than the Camino – you’re mostly walking in the countryside, often through farm fields with livestock (cows, sheep, horses), often trails that are flooded and muddy to the point that your shoes are getting stuck and almost pulled off, sometimes climbing steep and rocky hills.

Because the Hadrian’s Wall path cuts through fields of working farms with livestock, you’ll find an assortment of special gates and ladders designed to keep the livestock in their fields while letting walkers through, which often means climbing steep stairs over a fence. So even when the way itself is flat, there’s still a lot of up-and-down.

Walking Hours

There’s often something interesting to stop and see, or detour to, like the remains of a Roman Bridge or a museum, and because we had our accommodations pre-booked all along the route (necessary on the Hadrian’s Wall path), we were able to take our time as stop to rest, explore, or be leisurely.

There are plenty of days where the distance covered seems short compared to how long we were walking – sometimes that’s because we found neat things to check out, other times it’s because the path led over difficult terrain, like muddy fields, flooded paths, or a climb over rocky hills.

Accommodations

There are lots of places to stay along the path; we booked in July for our October trip, and liked a lot of the places we stayed. Something I might consider if I was doing it again would be to stay in one place for most of the nights, and use a car service or taxi to get to the walking points. Unlike the Camino, there’s nothing like the Albergues or Hostels, so you need to book in advance, but that also takes some of the stress out of the day, as you don’t need to worry that you’ll be hunting for a place to sleep every night.

Baggage Transfer Services

I had been planning on carrying my bag rather than sending it on with a service – I’d carried my bag throughout the Camino, and though I sometimes regretted it, it had been fine overall. The Hadrian’s Wall path is very different terrain, and even on the easy days you’re going to be doing some climbing. After Day 1 I realized that it was going to be a real difficulty to carry my full bag, so I was glad to pay the money to have our bags taken to the next location – we used Hadrian’s Haul to transfer ours.

The map below shows the route we took, our accommodations along the way, and some historical spots (marked with a skull & crossbones).

Our journey on Hadrian’s Wall

‘Walking time’ includes stopping for lunch and breaks throughout the day; we were slower on Hadrian’s Wall than we were on the Camino, in part because the terrain and weather is very different (some of these days were on easy paths, some were up over rocky hills with lots of climbing, some sunny days, some in driving rain and wind), and in part because all of our accommodations were pre-booked, and so we could take our time along the way. There are places along the way to explore, or to take a quick detour into – finding the phallus at the base of the Roman bridge, or finding a little community-run cafe with delicious tea and scones that you want to linger over – so it’s worth factoring in a little extra time.

Landing in Edinburgh
Day 1 – Bowness-on-Solway to Carlisle – 10 hours walking time, 28.7 km walked – this was a bit of an error on our part, I would recommend splitting this into two days.
Day 2 – Carlisle to Banks – 10 hours walking time, 23.1 km walked
Day 3 – Banks to Once Brewed – 9 hours walking time, 14.5 km walked
Day 4 – Once Brewed to Chollerford – 9 hours walking time, 12.3 km walked
Day 5 – Chollerford to East Wallhouses – 8.5 hours walking time, 20.2 km walked
Day 6 – East Wallhouses to Newburn – 6 hours walking time, 18.1 km walked
Day 7 – Newburn to Wallsend (Newcastle-on-Tyne) – 10 hours walking time, 9.3 km walked
Travel back to Edinburgh