Following on from our trip to Poltross Burn, Colin and I started driving to Walltown quarry. Once we arrived we got out to have a mini walk to see the the quarry and I had the chance to view Hadrian’s Wall from there. The carpark itself was pretty full of cars and large buses. It later came to my attention that there was most likely some form of organsised race or charity run taking place as may people exiting the vehicles seemed to be dressed in running gear.

From here Colin took me to see various other attractions. We passed the Roman Army Museum but unfortunately didn’t have chance to go in as we couldn’t fit it into our schedule. However I will definitely be returning to take a look inside another day.

The next stop of the tour was Housesteads. We parked the car in the visitor centre car park and got out to look at the remarkable view. From here you could see for miles to the south. You could also see the impressive modern visitors centre and then the footpath up towards the wall. Similar to Polross Burn, Housesteads also has the remains of another old Roman Fort. After Polross Burn, Colin and I had realised how easy it was to get carried away at these sites with all the history and fantastic scenery, therefore we made the decision to make our visit more brief to this particular site so we would be able to fit more into the day.

From here we then drove up to Steel Rigg. Steel Rigg is a car park which is a major access point to walking the wall. From this point, I was able to witness one of my favourite views of the wall tour so far, a stunning view of rolling hills with steeply cut edges and green that went on for miles.

Continuing on our trip, we travelled onto the Sill National Landscape Discovery Centre. Again we did not go in as I will soon be travelling to the Sill on a work mission (which I will talk about in a later blog) so I will get chance to explore it then. From the Sill we dropped down into Vindolanda via a back road to come within yards of the Vindolanda Site where archeologists were currently digging for Roman artifacts. We stopped here for a bit to watch and I learnt of the history of Vindolanda and how it is again an old Roman Auxiliary Fort and also used be a Roman village.

Due to the time of year, we soon realised we were running out of daylight so we needed to swiftly bring our day to an end. In the limited time we had left Colin took me past more Milecastles and took me for a brief look at Chesters Roman Fort before returning to Hexham where I caught my train back to Newcastle.