Carlisle; Wednesday, 27 May, 2009

Given that on the previous couple of days I had got up quite early to get pre-9am trains I had intended on having a nice long lie in and getting up quite late. Unfortunately, Wednesday is obviously the day the local glass recycling bins get collected, so I was woken at a little after 7:30 by the sounds of the cities empties being poured into the recycling lorry.

Having decided it was no use in going back to sleep I got up and then went out to explore the sites of the city. My first stop of the morning was the imposing bulk of Carlisle Castle. Having had a long look around that I crossed over the road to the Tullies House Museum which tells the history of the city.

I had a quick stop for a bite to eat before heading back out on the bus into Hadrian’s Wall Country, except this time I was only going back just over 800 years rather than nearly 2000. I got off at the ruins of Lanercost Priory, once a wealthy monastic order, slowly brought to it’s knees by being used as a base for armies going in both directions, and finally succumbing to Henry VIII reformation.

I caught the bus back into town from Lanercost and then hopped on another one back out the other side of town to Bowness-on-Solway. Bowness is a pleasant little town on the Solway Firth. But it is also a Geographically and Historically important place. It is here in the very top left hand corner of England that Hadrian’s wall meets the West coast, and England comes to an end. Across the waters of the Solway Firth is Scotland, and behind the Wall stretches for 84 miles back towards Newcastle.

Of course, technically Bowness isn’t actually the end of the wall, that would just have been far to easy to sail round and attack from the English side, so the wall continued along the coast all the way to Ravenglass, but this is the start or end point (depending on your direction) for people who want to “Walk the Wall” and so I set off on my walk.

I had no intention of completing the walk in full, just the first mile or so into the town of Port Carlisle to pick up the bus (and stop for a quick drink in the nice looking pub opposite the bus stop), but it does give me the opportunity, this August, to walk the last mile or so into Wallsend near Newcastle and successful claim to have walked from both ends of the wall (just ignoring that it took three months and only involved actually two miles of walking)

Having had a very pleasant half pint (I didn’t want to knock back a full pint in the 20 minutes I had to wait for the bus, another 10 minutes and it might have been a different story!) I caught the bus back into Carlisle to start packing for my move on north tomorrow.