Hadrian's Wall

Last week we had an amazing time hiking Hadrian's Wall. Hadrian's Wall is a wall built by Emperor Hadrian (surprise, surprise) of Rome. Construction began on this wall in the Roman Province of Britannia in 122 A.D. 

Hadrian's Wall is approximately 70 miles long. In some places the wall gets up to 20 feet wide and 20 feet high! Did you know there is a large fort about every 5 miles and a milecastle about every mile? (the Romans are full of surprises). The picture below is of a milecastle's ruins. 

 Along the wall there are always cliffs, lakes, or ditches, which the Romans purposely built the wall along to help keep out the Scots. These features did not help us though. The whole hike was extremely hilly and mountainous! We climbed the equivalent of almost 100 flights of steps in total! It was incredible to be walking where Roman Soldiers walked almost 2000 years ago. If you were a Roman soldier, it would be very hard to walk along the wall, because Roman soldiers had to carry and wear over 60 pounds of equipment.

 Along Hadrian's Wall and other people's property barrier walls, there were many ways to get over including steps, ladders, and stiles. We probably crossed over walls in one of these ways about 30 times over the course of our hike!

Towards the end our hike, we passed through a couple of fields with very large animals in them. Including this one, filled with rams with huge horns, right off the trail.

The 15 mile hike we did may have been hard, but it sure was worth it to see the views, history, and have an excellent time!