Carlisle; Sunday, 01 August, 2021

I had a bit of a lie in and a late start as I didn’t have much planned before my booked train back across the top of England.

After checking out I headed over to the station and caught the train back through Haltwhistle and Hexham to Newcastle, where I hopped onto the Metro and out to the airport hotel where I was staying for the night.

I checked in, dropped my stuff in the room and then headed back down to the Metro station to pick up the train over to my final attraction of the trip. I had two options – catch the Metro all the way back into the centre of town and change there, or catch the metro a handful of stops to South Gosforth and change there onto the line that heads round via the coast. On a sunny Sunday afternoon the coast felt like the better option – and it proved to be with beautiful views.

My final stop was Wallsend station located at the point where Hadrian’s Wall ended in the fort of Segedunum. In recognition of this Wallsend Metro station is the only metro station in Britain, and possibly the world, which has signage in Latin.

A short walk from the station is the site of Segedunum fort – much of it having been excavated, and the attached museum giving a good overview of what life would have been like at the fort, as well as along the first part of the wall. At the rear of the site is a small stub of wall that from the South side of the fort ran the couple of hundred yards down to the River Tyne and completed the border and the Northern extent of the Roman Empire.

Having visited the site and museum I headed back to the Metro station and caught the train back into the centre of Newcastle, where I stopped for dinner, before catching the metro back to my Hotel for an early night as I had an early flight back to Heathrow and home the following morning.