Just got back from three days in Paris, taking in the sights and generally doing the family holiday thing – as far as that goes nowadays – the kids have mostly grown up so it was only the youngest daughter that actually came away with us – oh yes and her friend and our grandson! So all in all the car was as full as it ever used to be on the family holiday.
France is a great place to drive – you don’t realise how awful the roads and the other drivers are in the UK until you get onto a French road. Even the fast motorways are mostly only two lanes, but the traffic is better disciplined and there’s no trucks to speak of, which all adds up to a much better experience. Take, for example, the trip back home…. Its 504 miles door to door from Paris to Cheshire.
160 miles from Paris to Calais took 2 hours 10 mins; average speed of just under 80 mph
344 miles from Folkestone to Cheshire took 9 hours 45 mins; average speed of about 35 mph!!
It took us 7 hours to get from the Channel Tunnel to Watford.
Anyway, that left me in no fit state at all for a walk on Saturday (today) and the weather looks bloody awful for tomorrow, so I think I’ll sack that one as well. Which leaves me time to do some Hadrian’s Wall planning. I’ve decided to walk it in 5 days, including a weekend, so I’ll only need three days holiday from work. I’m going to backpack it as well. Until now I wasn’t so sure, but I reckon I need the experience and it can’t still be raining in September can it? The last couple of years we’ve had a good September, so fingers crossed for three in a row.
The walk is all mapped out in Memory Map now and I’ll start printing off the route in the next few days. I’ll be using A5 strip maps like I did for the WHW as they seemed to work well. When its fine they fit into a top pocket or leg pocket in my walking pants and when its raining they fit into my little A5 waterproof document wallet.
My itinerary is looking something like this:
Day 0: Arrive Bowness, walk 2 miles to Port Carlisle and camp
Day 1: Port Carlisle to Crosby-on-Eden and camp
Day 2: Crosby-on-Eden to Greenhead and camp or YHA
Day 3: Greenhead to either Chollerford or Wall and camp
Day 4: Chollerford or Wall to Heddon-on-the-Wall and B&B or Bunkhouse
Day 5: Heddon-on-the-Wall to Wallsend and train home.
One or two long-ish days in there, but its mainly flat so hopefully that will help. There’s not much opportunity to wild camp as far as I can tell. It’s not a remote walk on the whole, so I’ll settle for established camp sites and that way I can at least remain fit for human association after a couple of days.
2 thoughts on “Hadrian’s Wall Path 2009 – Planning”
John
From what I can tell, the options for wild camping are very limited, apart from one or two sections in the middle, so my plans so far have been to use campsites rather than wild spots.
If on the other hand the opportunity arises, I would not be averse to wild camping, I prefer that over organised sites.
wildcamping or campsite?