Stephen Arnison

We’ll what a day, I feel good about it now but there’s been many times through the day when I could have given up. Firstly, the distance turned out to be 17.8 miles rather than 15, we needed to navigate a reasonably steep climb out of the Tyne valley for some 2 miles first thing…

Following a fantastic evening at Twice Brewed where we had a dinner of pizza and Sycamore Gap beer brewed on site, we set out for day no. 4. Before I get to that, I want to say a huge thank you to “Steve” the proprietor of Twice Brewed, a really lovely helpful man. So day…

After two days of glorious sunshine Monday looked very different. The rain came down throughout the day, sometimes heavy, sometimes light but never slowed enough for us to dry out and remove our wet weather gear for long. We started to see lots more of Hadrians Wall above ground in this section together we several…

After a good breakfast we checked out of Willowbeck Lodge, leaving our bags for Hadrian Haul to collect and transfer to Walton. We left a little earlier than day 1 and were on our way for 9am. For the first few miles we walked through parkland but the landscape started to change as we crossed…

A taxi to Bowness and we’re at the start ready to go at 10am. The journey from Carlisle to Bowness took no more than half an hour, it took substantially longer to walk back! The weather for most of the day was amazing, warm and sunny, in fact probably a little too warm. We quickly…

We’ve arrived in Carlisle which is our home for the next two nights. We’re staying at Willowbeck Lodge in Scotby which is a really nice place and far higher quality than I expected to encounter on this trip. We’ve enjoyed a good meal with a few glasses of wine and retired for the evening to…

Its the evening of Thursday 4th May 2023 and I’m busy packing ready to travel from Kent to Cumbria tomorrow. We’ll be overnighting in Carlisle on Friday prior to starting our six day hike on Saturday across the Hadrians Wall path, from Bowness-on-Solway in the West to Newcastle in the East. The path is a…