Epic Hikes of the World ( PDFDrive )

Sunset. First it is a fading yellow, then a burning orange. The sun dips below
the horizon – a series of grassy bluffs fronting dolerite crags – and suddenly
everything is a shade of hot pink I’ve never seen before. I sit at an outdoor
table at the Milecastle Inn (the only building for miles around) and slowly empty my
pint glass of warmish best bitter, shiver gently into my fleece, stand and employ
groaning feet. Evening falls late and resplendent over Cawfields on day four of my
hike along Hadrian’s Wall.
The first three days are a walk out of Bowness-on-Solway – a tiny village set
beside the Solway Firth, an inlet of the Irish Sea that marks the border between
England and Scotland – and into the undulating green countryside of Cumbria.
This is everything you want a walk in England to be: grass-strewn paths, sometimes
muddy and always sprinkled with daisies and buttercups, fields full of sheep,
teetering farmhouses and hills that seem to roll off into a dreaming sky. Further on,
crossing into Northumberland, the land becomes less tame, treeless fields climb
into craggy cliffs, above them swirling clouds that might, and very probably will,
keep you gently soaked.
Hadrian’s Wall National Trail is an 84-mile (135km) signposted path that follows
alongside the stone and earthen remains of the northernmost frontier of the Roman
empire – the emperor Hadrian’s final defence against invading northern tribes.
Many hikers opt to tackle this route from east to west, primarily because that is the
direction in which the wall was built, starting in AD 122. If you want to walk in the
footsteps of a Roman foot soldier, you begin at Segedunum, the original fort
outside of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and head west.