Thursday 26 September Breakfast at the hotel and we pack ready to leave. I ask for the bill ahead of checkout to be sure they have worked out the two bookings we stayed on. It took them 3 print outs but without my intervention they were finally satisfied and handed over the bill. All correct, amazing! Our taxi ride to the airport was the standard €30 but with all the underground tunnels in Madrid it was only around 15 minutes. We missed virtually all of t...

Friday 23 August We put a donation in Owen's charity jar for breast cancer research and to say "thank you" as Owen has offered to drop us at Wylam train station, which is next to the River Tyne, and a short ride to the main station in Newcastle. Wylam's claim to fame is as the birth place of George Stephenson, and there was a small National Trust museum to prove it (now closed evidently). George was a Victorian civil and mechanical engineer, who is best known ...

Thursday 22 August Today is our last day following the Hadrian's Path wooden signposts. Tony brings all the bags down the narrow steep stairs and we start off towards Chester Bridge at 9.15am. It is a grey day with light rain falling, just enough to be annoying. Our route takes us on a seeming diversion away from the line of the wall, but it is only to make the climb up St. Oswald's Hill from 53 to 250m ASL easier, and get us off the busy B6318. Close to the ...

Wednesday 21 August We accept the offer of a lift back up the hill to Steel Rigg to start our 4th day on the Wall. Today we continue to climb up and down the crags formed by the Whin Sill intrusive dolerite. Between Peel Crags and Highshield Crags we encounter a sycamore tree growing in the gap. This has become something of an iconic image following the Kevin Costner film "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" which used the location in the movie. At 4.8km we reach...

Tuesday 20 August After a breakfast around a large table with our fellow guests we finally get outside in to the damp morning and start walking back down to Gilsland at 9.45am. We discover a track detour is in place, so walk back through the village for a short distance, and then re-join the trail at an underpass below the Newcastle-Carlisle railway. Two km further on we cross over the rail line again, this time we walk over the rails at a light controlled p...