Hadrian's Wall: Days 3&4 Walton to Greenhead to Grindon

This is a bumper blog post - 2 days in 1! (I didn't have any signal last night)

Day 3 was the first time we came across any Roman remains as between Bowness and Walton the remains are buried. To celebrate, we decided on some Roman names for each other: Lethus Maximus and Rachus Augustus. We had a couple of small hills and a couple of torrential showers but it was mainly flat and dry. We stopped at Birdowsald fort to get our passports stamped (as proof we are walking the wall!) and watched some young aspiring Roman soldiers get put through their paces. We made a diversion to Slackhouse farm shop and tea room, hoping to have a nice lunch and get some vegetables to spice up our evening stirfry - no such luck! The soup and quiche we had for lunch were ok, and the salad with the quiche was quite impressive, however there was absolutely no sign of vegetables or anything that could be stirfried. So dinner ended up as noodles with sauce - boring but plenty of it.

To keep our mood up despite the disappointing lunch, I taught Liath the meatball song (complete with Italian opera singer style emotion) and another group of walkers told us we sounded like a choir of angels!! Our bunkhouse was a little nicer than at Sandysike, other than the grumpy owner who seemed to be rather inconvenienced by us.

We woke up this morning with mixed feelings, knowing today would be our toughest day. We had been warned yesterday by another walker who said 'good luck' as we passed. We returned the comment but he turned round, looked us straight in the eye and said 'no, seriously, good luck, you need it!' However, someone else had told us it was the most fun part of the walk, so we set off a little unsure how the day would pan out.

We began our day at the Roman Army Museum in Greenhead, which was really interesting. It was well done, and you learn about why the wall was built as well as what life was like along the wall at the forts, milecastles and turrets that are so frequent (two turrets between every milecastle). We also learnt how to write our new Roman names in Roman script! The weather today held out, despite the odd threatening rain drop, but was very windy on top of the crags. I can understand why some people really struggle with this section, especially if they are not prepared for it. Crag after crag, you go up and down so many times it could easily become demoralising. However, the scenery is nothing short of spectacular and the paths were mainly grass, with stone steps on most of the steep ascents. It was more what I expected the Hadrians Wall path to be like, and there was no shortage of Roman wall, milecastle and turret remains to keep the path interesting. We had a brief look round Housesteads fort before continuing over sewingshields crags to our hostel near Grindon where we were greeted with a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit! Plenty of pasta carbonara followed by tea bread and custard means we are going to bed with full stomachs (but slightly sore feet - the crags were particularly good at causing blisters, despite the blister plaster, foam padding and tape I had already covered my feet in!) For me, today has been one of my favourite and we can look forward to the rest of the wall, knowing the physically toughest section is done.

Prayer requests:
(Thank-you to everyone who prayed for our morals...they are still high and we have paid for everything we've had from the honesty boxes! I had meant to type morale, realised as soon as I posted it but I can't edit it on my phone haha!)
Thank God that we got through today and it was enjoyable rather than horrendous
Pray for healing for our blisters (Liath has one on her little toe that is now bigger than the toe :( )
Pray that our friendship stays strong despite the tiredness