Another day - yet another pre-walk

This recce was for the North Pennines AONB Walking Festival. We (Haltwhistle Walking Festival volunteers) are leading 2 walks for them in their new festival which starts next Saturday. They have an interesting and hugely ambitious programme, with 50 walks over 9 days. Many are being run by other organisations like us.

On Saturday they are trying to recreate Wainwright's famous Pennine Journey that he undertook in 1938. The whole route will be walked on the day, with different groups doing different sections. My walk is Hexham to Housesteads which is 15 miles. Harry, who volunteered to help me, but who says he had no choice! and I decided to do a reduced walk today because a lot is on the Hadrian's Wall Trail and it well known to us.

He was using an old and a new GPS today - don't ask. Here we are at the end of our stretch and if you zoom in you can see that we walked 11 miles with a walking average of 3 mph and an overall average of 2.5mph (allowing for coffee/lunch/talking to other walkers). It was mainly uphill too.

I was pleased with Arth who was no bother. The sad thing is that so few people have booked on this walk - but I can't say it's the most interesting route. Too much road walking for us and a lot of single file. The views in the second half are good.

Just before this photo was taken, a group of Germans were released from a coach and came to speak to us. "Where is Hadrian's Wall?" they asked. How do you explain that it is under the tarmac road at this point? Harry sent them off for a walk along the Trail.......

The Haltwhistle Walking Festival starts on Oct 5th so if you have some free walking time, we would love to see you. (Plug over). Actually if you want to walk 15 miles from Hexham to Housesteads we'd love to see you there too............