If
you’d rather just look at the pictures and video from the ride please
follow these links.
We set off twice, once from our house and then an hour and a half later
from Tim’s
house once he had finished rebuilding his bike!
Arrived at Bowness-on-Solway to “Wallsend”
The Old Rectory which is a lovely B&B and we would all recommend it.
We had dinner at The
King’s Arms pub in the village, where the chef allowed the boys half
of two puddings each as they couldn’t decide which one to have!
We also wrote an entry in their “visitors
book 2008” on the back of page 1 should you ever get there yourself to
add to it!
We set off in lovely sunshine from the B&B, powered by a very hearty
breakfast.
After 20 minutes I slowed down causing a knock on effect to John and
then Tim clipped the back of John’s bike and they had their first (and
thankfully only) crash of the ride.
After that we headed on to the outskirts of
We enjoyed the nice bit of off road around
At about 12:15, we met Bruce and had a picnic
in the car at
We set off again about 1:00 and continued through
We would like to thank the kind people of the Lanercost
Cricket Club who let the boys use their facilities! There is quite a steep hill out of Lanercost – be warned!
We saw our first piece of Hadrian’s Wall at Banks
and just after that we were hit by such a cross wind and blizzard that we had
to stop and shelter behind a wall (again there is a clip in the video –
but the blizzard doesn’t seem as bad as it should).
At 4:00 we arrived tired but pleased with ourselves at Willowford Farm
B&B.
Woke up to find about an inch of snow lying on the ground and it was
still snowing.
Set
off at 10:00 in lovely sunshine again, but through the snow. Tim changed
his tyres from slick to mountain to cope with the snowy conditions, but in the
latter stages of the ride got very annoyed that we were freewheeling away from
him even though he was pedalling “like his pants were on fire” as
he put it.
The climb
out of Greenhead soon after the start is very long and steep, but we all
managed it OK. There is an
excellent cycle path alongside the very fast main road.
Just as we crossed this road, a blizzard set in and Tim had to borrow my
knitted green hat, in
which he looked very fetching.
Cycling in a blizzard is not much fun, particularly when you are
whizzing downhill and the snow is smacking into your eyes really painfully.
11:45 – met Bruce in Bardon Mill and
decided to keep going until the highest
point of the ride which is just after Vindolanda.
Vindolanda
visitor centre is lovely and it’s a pity we didn’t really have time
to look around, but they kindly let us use their facilities J.
If you have the time it would be well worth a stop here.
We met Bruce at the highest point of the ride and he braved yet another
blizzard to take a picture
of all 3 of us.
It is psychologically a wonderful thing to feel that the highest point
is behind you!
We cycled on through Hexham and although we got a bit lost in the
village centre we picked up the signs again on the way out of it.
We met Bruce in Corbridge, loaded up the bikes and drove to the Hadrian Hotel at Wall where we were
staying in their cottage just next door, which was ideal.
After another hearty breakfast we loaded up the bikes and headed back to
Corbridge to
start where we left off. As it turns
out we set a hopelessly optimistic target for the day which was to make 30
miles in 3 hours – because it looked pretty flat on the ride profile.
There are some lovely traffic free paths on this section of the ride,
although with it being a bank holiday Sunday it was fairly busy with walkers
and dogs, so we were cautious about going too fast.
The funniest moment of the ride happened when Tim and John asked if they
could ride down to the edge of the
We made it to Gateshead
at 1pm – we had been hoping to get there by 12:00, but made a mistake as
we arrived in Newcastle – this is really one to watch out for if you are
going to do this ride, because as we retraced our steps to the point where we
went wrong, we met another group of cyclists also doing the Hadrian’s
Wall who were about to make the same mistake.
The problem is just as you turn right off this
bridge (you will be on the pavement on the right hand side of the
road). There is a sign at a pelican
crossing that indicates turning left and if you are tired (as we definitely
were!) you don’t realise that this is actually sending you back the way
you came, but on the opposite side of the river. If you look carefully at the sign, it is
3-way and you actually need to carry on down the pavement with the river on
your right.
It was great to meet up with my cousin John
and his wife Helen, who watched our bikes for us while we dashed into a
sandwich bar and got some lunch.
There was a market beside the river so we had to push our bikes through
all the folks which John and Helen helped us to do as we ate our
sandwiches. We ‘phoned Bruce
at this point to say we still had 9 miles to go and so wouldn’t get there
until at least 2:00.
John told us about the cycle tunnel under the
However, after a bit of faffing about, we
finally arrived at
As we cycled towards the ferry we saw Bruce just walking down the road to
meet the ferry that he hoped we were on.
We told him we needed to still ride up to the fort at Arbeia – the official finish, so we’d meet
him back at the car park.
Just as we got to the fort another
blizzard hit. We ‘phoned
John to let him know where we were, but they were still on the ferry and it was
quite a walk from there to the fort and not much fun in a blizzard, so it was a
real shame, but we said goodbye on the phone L.
At least we had made it to the official end
of the ride.
We whizzed back down the hill to Bruce, loaded
up and set off for home – tired, but very happy to have made it.
Overall the ride was great fun and the route took in some lovely villages
and scenery and most of it felt very safe to ride. We used the Sustrans
Hadrians Wall website to help us plan and it was
really useful.
If I were doing it again, I would book in somewhere to stay overnight on
the 3rd day so that there was no time pressure as I think that was
something I could have done without.
I would also get a more detailed map for the Gateshead/North/South
Shields sections as that was where we went most wrong – although it may
just have been because we were so tired.
In terms of recovery time, I felt really tired on the Monday and then OK
after that, but I was very glad not to be going back to work until the
following week.
John and Tim took most of the week to fully recover and we only went for
a short bike ride on the following Saturday rather than our usual 4 hours
mountain biking with the Bogtrotters!