Hadrian’s Wall from Historic Hexham

Bridge over the River North Tyne at Wark

Hadrian’s Wall from Historic Hexham

Cycle over wild, open terrain that will make you appreciate the natural hazards that the Romans faced when they built Emperor Hadrian’s wall nearly 2,000 years ago. Chief among these is the Great Whin Sill, a long and deep plug of igneous rock that erupts in crags. You’ll be riding, in daylight presumably, through the Northumberland Dark Sky Park, the largest expanse of protected dark sky in Europe. You also pass a remote Northumbrian church with a bizarre modern history. Back in Hexham after a long day in the saddle, spend £3 to view the Roman carvings in Hexham abbey’s 1,300-year-old crypt — stones from a nearby fort were reused by the Saxon builders of the first priory church on this site, erected in jaw-dropping 674CE.

Above: Steel Rigg

ROUTE INFO

DISTANCE/TIME  93km/7 hours

START/FINISH Hexham rail station.

DIFFICULTY/TERRAIN Challenging climbs on narrow country lanes through the picturesque Tyne Valley. The mid-section through Wark forest is on well-drained gravel trails. Final climbs avoid busy road. Away from Hexham and the much-visited attractions on Hadrian’s Wall there are few options for food, and even fewer out of season.

SCENERY Remote, wild, and, at times, stark, this loop is nevertheless a Northumbrian delight taking you over steeps little changed since the Romans left Hadrian’s Wall country.

SUITABLE FOR  All bikes. The 7.5km gravel section through Wark forest can be ridden gingerly on road bikes.

NATIONAL CYCLE NETWORK (NCN) Route 72 Hadrian’s Cycleway. Route 68 Pennine Cycleway. Route 10 Reiver’s Way.

MAP Haltwhistle & Hexham OL43 1:25 000

GPX FILE

This ride is remote, especially north of the tourist honeypot sites along Hadrian’s Wall. Stock up on supplies at the Waitrose superstore next to Hexham station.

Leaving town there’s a busy roundabout to negotiate before a left turn onto a traffic-free cycleway through a country park skirting the Tyne. From the tiny village of Warden, just after you cross the River South Tyne, you’re on narrow country lanes for the rest of the ride. Instead of heading north to the Roman fort at Chesters (although, if you have the time, it would make a grand diversion) turn left towards Fourstones and follow the Stanegate Roman road to

Vindolanda. Most of the extant forts, milecastles, and turrets along Hadrian’s Wall are English Heritage properties; Vindolanda is run by a private trust and is a must-see archaeological wonder with a world-class museum. Some of the globally important Vindolanda tablets housed in the museum join other startling Roman-era finds, including a wooden toilet seat.

North from Vindolanda, you roll past the Twice Brewed Inn and YHA The Sill (good for food, and thanks to the National Landscape Discovery Centre, an explanation of the importance of the Great Whin Sill upon which Hadrian’s Wall clings). Take care 

crossing the B6318, more commonly known as the Military Road. Military as in an 18th-century English army setting out in 1746 to suppress the Jacobites fighting for Scotland’s Bonnie Prince Charlie. The road was actually the work of civilians ten years later. Closer to Newcastle the road was built by levelling Hadrian’s Wall, a travesty that so shocked period antiquarians that they set out to protect what was left.

Similarly, most of the farmhouses nearby were built from dressed stones robbed from the wall.

Another crime occurred in 2023 — the felling of the iconic tree in Sycamore 

Mountain bike pioneers Joe Breeze and Charlie Kelly at Hadrian's Wall near Steel Rigg, 2017.

Gap. Tree or no tree, there are still dramatic views over to Hadrian’s Wall, roller coasting over the Great Whin Sill.

From Twice Brewed head north to climb the narrow road through the gap in the wall at Steel Rigg. There’s a car park here popular with those walking over Peel Crags to the spectacular fort of Housesteads.

From here on you’re in remote country, little visited. There’s a 7.5km stretch of gravel road soon after you enter Wark Forest.

Want to split the journey? There’s a rustic campsite at Stonehaugh deep in the dark sky park, a few hundred metres off route. There’s also a dark sky vantage point here, the Star Dome wooden circle set in a wildflower meadow and planted with a green roof.

Exiting the forest you’re back on asphalt and follow the Warksburn, a tributary of the River North Tyne. The small village of Wark has a pub, and  

the last shop before Hexham. Crossing the River North Tyne at Wark you soon pass the imposing Chipchase Castle, a 17th-century Jacobean mansion incorporating a substantial 14th-century pele tower built to withstand marauding reivers. These were medieval English and Scottish families who stole each other’s cattle and killed and raided between themselves in what, for a few hundred years, was a lawless border zone. (Part of this ride is on Sustrans’ Reiver’s route.)

Take care on a short stretch of the A68, a die-straight section of Dere Street, the Roman road from York to Scotland. There aren’t many motorists but those that do pass often do so at unthinking speeds.

After crossing the northern tip of the Colt Crag reservoir you ride between dolerite crags to reach ancient St. Aidan’s of Thockrington, a church with a congregation only of sheep and which is the surprise last resting place of one of our national heroes as well as the burial spot of a best-selling author and his Nazi dad.

the burial — a temporary one — was that of comic novelist Tom Sharpe.

Still in the ground here is Sharpe’s father. 

In 1942, Beveridge authored a hugely influential report that led to the creation, six years later, of Britain’s National Health Service.

This national hero might have been buried with pomp in Westminster Abbey. Instead, he was lowered into a cold Northumbrian plot in 1963 to be with his wife who died four years earlier, breathing her last down the hill from St. Aidan’s in Carrycoats Hall, the home of her daughter. 

Lord and Lady Beveridge share this hallowed ground with Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, a one-time Unitarian minister and full-time Nazi.

Sharpe died in 1944 in Sussex, but because he had briefly been a preacher at St. Aidan’s – a church that served just a few farmhouses — his body was laid to rest in the graveyard. The Reverend was a leading member

of a London-based pro-Nazi hate-group founded in 1937 and which opposed war with Germany. MI5 kept tabs on several of the group’s members. A Northumbrian church miles from anywhere was an ideal place for Sharpe to lay low.

Earlier in the 1930s, Reverend Sharpe had visited Germany with his young family, taking them to Nazi rallies. Tom Sharpe was 11 when war broke out in 1939, and he initially shared his father’s foul ideology.

Sharpe Senior didn’t live long enough to witness the liberation of the Nazi death camps, but his son did, and, at that point, scales fell from his eyes.

Tom Sharpe became a virulent anti-racist. He was also later a comic writer of note. His Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape novels were best-sellers in the 1970s and 1980s.

Sharpe always had a soft spot for Northumberland. According to Catalan doctor Montserrat Verdaguer Clavera, his partner for the last ten years of his life, Sharpe had a particularly soft spot  

for the cold earth of Thockrington. After his death at their Costa Brava villa in 2013, she found correspondence that recorded he wanted to be buried in the graveyard of St. Aidan’s.

Slight problem. He had already been cremated, and half his ashes given to his estranged wife. Not to be deterred, in 2014, Dr Verdaguer drove from Spain with the other half of Sharpe’s ashes burying them at St. Aidan’s. However, she hadn’t sought permission for the interment. When Church of England bigwigs caught wind of the unofficial burial, they dispatched a vicar to disinter the urn, a farce worthy of one of Sharpe’s novels.

From Thockrington it’s east to the similarly one-farm village of Little Bavington before turning right and heading back to Hexham crossing Dere Street again at Low Errington. Keeping steep hills on your left you can no longer avoid them after you cross the Military Road just shy of Chollerford. If you didn’t visit the Roman fort of Chesters now might be

the time to do it, followed perhaps by a drink at the George at Chollerford, a faded 17th Century hotel on the bank of the River North Tyne.

The quickest way back to Hexham, avoiding steep hills, is on the lightly travelled A6079 but requires crossing a busy roundabout on the A69.

Instead, ride for a few minutes on the Military Road — here built on the route of Hadrian’s Wall — and then tackle the hills before Acomb, a satellite village of Hexham. Dog leg via the Rat Inn gastropub at Anick, a former drover’s inn, and dip below the A69 in front of a chipboard factory spewing smoke (it’s just steam, but unsightly nevertheless and very much a sore point in these parts) before arriving back at the station after carefully crossing the 18th-century nine-arch bridge over the Tyne. Carefully because you share the bridge with all traffic; it’s rarely moving very fast though (Hexham’s persistent traffic congestion is another local sore point) and cyclists sail on through.

Remote, wild, and, at times, stark, this loop is a Northumbrian delight taking you over steeps little changed since the Romans left Hadrian’s Wall country.

HADRIAN’s WALL AND THE STANEGATE

Marching 117km between Carlisle and Newcastle, Hadrian’s Wall is a British cultural icon and one of UNESCO’s top World Heritage sites. Much of the central section of the Wall is still standing, to a height of 3m in places. Originally built to a height of about 5m on the instructions of Emperor Hadrian in 122CE this near-2000-year-old edge of empire marker was not a defensive line against the Celtic Britons, rather it was a stone-built power trip and linear customs post rolled into one. The lands to the immediate north of it were patrolled and controlled by the Roman Army. Today’s border with Scotland is some 40km further north.

The Roman road known as the Stanegate, or “stone street” — and on which we cycle along— existed before the Wall. It linked forts such as the famous Vindolanda. Famous because of the Vindolanda tablets. These are hundreds of wooden postcards, one addressed to the fort commander’s wife inviting her to a birthday party. Another, to a presumably frozen soldier, noted the sending of two pairs of warm underpants. The tablets, the first of which were found in 1973, are star attractions at the British Museum in London, and more are still being discovered at what remains an active archeological dig. Just 27 percent of Vindolanda has so far been uncovered. There’s an impressive museum (£12.50). Immediately east of Vindolanda on the Stanegate, linger at a denuded Roman milestone, one of very few still in their likely original position.

The Stanegate stays south of the wall, as does the Vallum, a still prominent 3m deep ditch added to the Roman military landscape after the wall was built. The Vallum likely marked the start of a no-go-zone for those approaching the wall, which was punctuated by evenly spaced gates. One of these gates, close to where the much-missed solo sycamore once stood, would have opened to a sheer and fatal drop over the Great Whin Sill, a steep slab of black dolerite. The gate-to-aaargh is evidence that those who built the wall stuck to a must-not-be-altered plan.

STAY/EAT

Hexham is a busy market town and, thanks to its close proximity to Hadrian’s Wall, it has a healthy tourist trade. Nevertheless there are only a few hotels and B&Bs in town. Better to stay at one of the farmhouse B&Bs nearby, such as the Anick Grange farmhouse B&B, en route, and less than 2km from Hexham, or stay at The Sill, a state-of-the-art YHA , or at the Twice Brewed Inn next door. There’s also a bunk barn, and camping, at Winshields Campsite, close to Twice Brewed, and, en route, the camp site at Stonehaugh. What Hexham lacks in accommodation it makes up for with eateries — the town has many, including fine dining. The Rising Cafe on Beaumont Street in the centre of town is run by the Betel charity, which helps people return to normal life after battling drug and alcohol addiction. It serves classic homemade food including vegan dishes. The Garden Hexham on Hallgate next to the Old Gaol, a 13th-century must-visit, is a bagels-and-smoothie-bowls coffee shop with many nooks and crannies, always busy. Tel: 01434 606656.

Right top: View of Hexham from the route.

Right middle: Cream tea outside Hexham Jail.

Right bottom: Hexham jail

GETTING THERE

Hexham is 60km from Carlisle and 36km from Newcastle, cities served by Northern Trains on the scenic Tyne Valley Line. Trains each way run every twenty minutes or so during the day, Monday to Saturday, and hourly in the evenings and on Sunday. Bikes are carried free of charge with no need to make reservations but there’s space for just two on a first come, first served basis. Hexham is on the A69 between Newcastle and Carlisle; mostly dualled. Because of its lack of HGVs some motorists prefer the Military Road which is treated like a race track at times.

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