5/11 – 5/13/22
5-11
I drove on the left for the first time seven years ago, when I spent a week in Cyprus. I did it again three years ago, in Ireland. But I had to keep reminding myself, in the moments after I picked up my rental car in Leeds, that all my instincts had to be reversed. In the end, once I escaped the buzzing roundabouts of Leeds, the first drive wasn’t bad. Just long – two hours straight north, to Hadrian’s Wall country.
Pictures of Hadrian’s Wall (turf-covered, snaking through a snowy infinity of hills) appear in every textbook of Roman history, and for years I’ve wanted to see the Empire’s northernmost frontier myself. Some visitors hike the whole length of the wall, visiting every fort along the way. I would have liked to do something similar, but since my schedule only allowed one day, I decided to focus on a few stretches of the wall and the two best-preserved forts.
The first of these was Chesters, located beside the mansion of the nineteenth-century lord who excavated the fort. I liked the old-fashioned museum, with its serried shelves of inscriptions and tombstones. The entire site, buried in ranges of rolling green hills, was picturesque; but the highlight was the bathhouse, located in a stand of oaks beside the rushing River Tyne. It really was, as the pleasant old lady at the register had promised, “quite lovely.”
I became extremely lost looking for a gas station, and ended up in the driveway of a farmhouse. When I finally found my way to Hadrian’s Wall, I started with the most spectacular stretch, along the rim of the rugged cliff known as the Sill.
I walked along the wall – seldom more than six feet high, a third of its original height – for several miles. Clouds tumbled overhead and hills rolled away to either side, raked by a cold west wind. About halfway through my walk, a sudden storm lashed the landscape with horizontal rain. Then sun again, and wind.
I stopped at Housesteads Fort, where – among other highlights – I saw the best-preserved Roman latrine in Britain. As I made my way to the minibus stop in the parking lot, another storm materialized, hurling sheets of rain and marble-sized hail against every available surface. Fortunately, it passed quickly, and a pale half-moon rose over the retreating thunderheads as I walked back to my car.
Farther east, I walked a mile or so of wall at Walltown Crags, another section that plunges dramatically over hills and valleys. Unlike the stretch along the Sill – where I had seen a few dozen other hikers – I was alone here. Coming to the remains of a watchtower, I surveyed the landscape, filled with that sighing wind, and wondered what it would have been like to stand here, day after day, waiting for the barbarians.
5-12
The sky over the Lake District was heavy with clouds, and it was raining when I started my hike up Scafell Pike, the highest peak in England. The sun emerged briefly, dappling the green slopes, before new clouds sagged over the peaks.
A rushing stream, flashing with waterfalls. A sea of shifting rock. A tarn swept by a cold breeze.
Then up into the clouds, into a private world made real only by the stones underfoot. The summit was featureless, save when a momentary break in the clouds revealed a sweeping panorama of hills and lakes. But before I could take a picture, the gap closed. A view would have been nice, but at least I had the mountain to myself.
After returning to my car – parked in a tiny village filled with the bleats of lambs – I made my way to Yorkshire, where I was reacquainted with the joys of two-way traffic on one-lane roads. I parked, with considerable relief, in the charming village of Malham, at the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.
Discovering a bit of spring still in my step, I took a five-mile hike around Malham. The local landscape is famous for its limestone cliffs and canyons, but I was most impressed by the rolling green hills, flecked with sheep, which reminded me of the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. My walk ended back at Malham, where I demolished a burger and cider at the first pub I encountered.
5-13
After playing chicken with every tractor in Yorkshire, I finally found my way to a highway with two actual lanes. This brought me through a desolate landscape of heath and dragging clouds, and finally to the monumental ruins of Fountains Abbey, probably the most impressive medieval ruin in England.
As I explored the soaring church and warren-like monastery, my only regret, oddly, was that the ruins were so well-tended. I would have loved to see it was it was in the century after the dissolution, when grass grew waist-high around the buildings, and the only sound was birdsong.
Returning my car via every roundabout in Leeds, I took a train to York, hurried to the Minster (I couldn’t get inside, but made a slow circuit of the exterior, with its countless pinnacles and grotesques.) Then back on the train – or rather, series of trains – which carried me, after many delays, to Swindon.
