Hexham; Sunday, 25 July, 2021

I’d stayed overnight in a hotel near Heathrow – or at least as close as you can get to Heathrow at the moment, with most of the closest hotels turned into government plague jails. Consequently, rather than a short walk to the terminal it was a 15 minute cab ride over to the terminal to checkin.

The journey itself was pretty smooth with my flight landing early, and by the time I reached Newcastle Central station I had plenty of time to make the train an hour earlier than the one I was originally aiming for. As the train was on the platform, and had a crew, I decided it would be unwise to wait for a later one in case that got cancelled due to the increasing number of railway staff being forced off work by the Covid-app pingdemic.

Consequently, I was in Hexham a good two hours before checkin for my hotel. I headed over to ask if it would be possible to leave my bag for a few hours, but it turned out that my room was already available, and they were happy to let me checkin.

After dumping my stuff in my room, I headed up into the centre of Hexham and had a wander round the town centre, taking in the Old Gaol, Moot Hall and Market place before arriving at the Abbey and having a look around that.

A quick stop for a late lunch in the centre of town and then I wandered on down to the bus station to catch the bus over to the nearby town of Corbridge and start my journey along the Roman frontier.

Parts of the current town of Corbridge date back to the 7th century, and there’s lots of remnants from the middle ages with a 14th century fortified vicarage in the churchyard. But a short distance out of town in the much older settlement of Coria, originally founded as a fort around 84AD the site pre-dates the wall by around 40 years, but after the coming of Hadrian’s Wall it became an important supply base to the wall that was just over 2 miles north of it. As would happen with Roman forts a small town or Vicus built up around the fort and today much of the fort and parts of the vicus have been excavated.

I spent quite a bit of time having a wander round the site – so long in fact that the custodians were effectively closing up behind me as I was making my way round the audio guided tour.

I walked back into Corbridge and caught the bus back into Hexam in search of some dinner.

After dinner I headed down to the River Tyne as looking at the map I’d realised it appeared to run almost perfectly West to East through town and sure enough from the bridge on the edge of town I was rewarded with a stunning sunset with the sun pretty much dipping down through the centre of the river. Having taken quite a few pictures I headed back to my hotel and turned in for the night.