Hadrian's Wall and The Sycamore Gap

 Dear Gentle Readers

Today we drove to Steel Rigg, a car park near Hadrian's Wall, named after Roman Emperor Hadrian who had it constructed around 120 A.D. I was taught in primary school it was built to keep the Picts and Scots out of England, but in reality it was to control trade as well as to keep out raiding hordes.

This is the initial path down to the wall. Little did we know what was in store for us.

This is Hadrian's Wall as it snakes across the countryside. Large portions of the wall have totally disappeared, often robbed for stone to construct walls and houses, but here still perfectly preserved.

This is the initial climb we were faced with. Doesn't look too bad, does it. Fools! Do not believe what you think you see. It is steep, difficult with narrow stone steps, winding up the hill side. Halfway up, you come to a gap in the wall that is only wide enough for your legs, you have to put your first leg in as far as it will go then bring you other leg in and sort of shuffle through the gap. It is perilous and not for the faint-hearted.

This is the view from the top. It is really, really high.

Then it fools you with a seemingly level path until...

you reach another descent then...

another climb. Then you reach...

a milestation. As the name suggests, these stations were positioned a mile apart and Roman soldiers were garrisoned here.

Then you climb again and descend, rinse and repeat.

Finally we reach the famous Sycamore Gap with the huge Sycamore Tree made famous in the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. What's that you say? You can't see a tree? Well, therein lies a tale.

It seems a few years ago, two bright lads thought it would be a lark to climb down here, at night (you couldn't pay me enough to do that) with a chainsaw and fell the famous Sycamore Tree. It fell across the wall and damaged it. Then these two bright sparks took pictures of their deed and ... bragged about it online!!!

This is all that remains of that tree. Soon after the constabulary visited these two dimwits and now they are being detained at the government's pleasure for the next four and half years, hopefully being remorseful for their absolutely stupid act of vandalism to a much loved site.

Here's a selfie we took before we found out what we were in for. We wisely decided not to do the final descent to the tree stump as it was very steep and Victoria's foot was becoming very sore.

On the way back we found a track that went around that first steep climb so we didn't have to descend it, which we both were not looking forward to. Our smart watches says we did 8000 steps. It felt like a lot more! We are glad we did it, but would not like to tackle it again.

So ends the tale of the Sycamore Gap.