Day Five
Somehow I thought this trail would not venture up a cliff like the one pictured above. But I was wrong. If you want to follow Hadrian’s Wall then you have to go to where the Romans built it. Looking at the cliffs ahead, I wondered why the Romans thought they needed a wall on top. The natural crags seemed defense enough. However, the Romans were thorough, and they built atop the Walltown Crags. That meant that anyone who came later had to go up on rocks assembled to make bumpy stairs (second photo below).
Then walk across crag to the next set of rocky stairs going downhill (for creaky knees, that’s worse).
According to “Hadrian’s Wall Path,” this is the “highest part of the Wall that hasn’t been restored or rebuilt by well-meaning 19th-century archaeologicals.”
All of this up and down, but mostly up, leads to Green Slack on Winshield Crag, the highest point on the trail.
Magnificent pictures! It looks like great weather.