Walking the Wall: Day 6 Housesteads to Chollerford

After a second night in lovely and accommodating Bowes Motel, we sat down to a hearty breakfast in the hotel's dining room. The staff graciously gave us a ride to Housesteads so we could  continue the walk. That cut 1.8 miles off what was to be an 11.7 mile day. 

This was the nicest day, weather-wise. The sky was clear and we had no rain. 

Our first challenge was climbing Sewingshields Crags, another of those picturesque hills on which the wall snakes up to high cliffs. Look carefully, and near the top of the hill you can see a little white dot. That's my husband, who is training for a marathon this fall and decided to take advantage of the lovely weather and run the course this day.  The rest of us continued to walk and to marvel at the views—north into Scotland and south into England. They were breathtaking. 

By lunchtime, we had made it to Brocolitia Roman Fort, an English Heritage Site that remains unexcavated.  The man who runs the Corbridge Coffee Company’s Coffee van was a lot of fun to talk with. I bought a soda from him, the first sugary drink I had the whole time I was in England. In the hot sun, it tasted very, very satisfying. 

Nearby Brocolitia, is Temple to Mithras, a mysterious god whose rituals were all secretive and still largely unknown. The Temple was probably built by soldiers based at the nearby fort in about AD 200. The three altars were found here, all dedicated by commanding officers of the unit stationed here, the First Cohort of Batavians from the Rhineland. There was money, cigarettes, and other offerings on the altars, showing the paganism is not dead, even now.

 

Just before we got to the Mithric Temple, we crossed a boggy area. The man at the Corbridge Coffee Company’s Coffee van let me know that was Coventina’s Spring. There is nothing there but a little raised wooden walkway to get you through the muck, but it had been the site of a huge hoard of coins, offerings to the water goddess that inhabited the spring. In 1876, John Clayton, an amateur archaeologist to whom Hadrian's Wall owes much, opened up Coventina's Well and discovered 13,487 coins, many of which dated to a55AD. He then hauled Coventina's altar to his house in Chollerford, which is now the Chester’s Museum. 

Broccolita is on AD122 route, so one could take the bus from Vinolanda or Housesteads to Broccolita.

A little farther on, we got to Limestone corner, the northernmost point on the trail, and the farthest north that the Roman Empire reached. The rock here is not limestone as the name would imply, but the much harder whinstone, a kind of basalt. The stones show 

signs of being worked by Roman masons, who must have realized that they were too hard to hack through and abandoned the project of clearing the ditch of them.

My husband found us again soon after Limestone Corner. He'd run all the way to Chollerford, then walked back to us because I was carrying his pack, and his lunch! 

If you are not up to running or walking all the way to Chollerford, you're in luck. The Ad122 bus runs all the way there. 

We stayed at The George Hotel in Chollerford. It had once been a pub and Inn, but a large addition was added to the back that's made it almost more of a conference center. The George has a  lovely dining room with windows overlooking the River Tyne. The breakfast was buffet style, with lots of selection. It also has lovely grounds, with chairs and tables out on the lawn. 

 Instead of eating dinner there, we walked north to the next village and ate at The Crown, a fun pub with lots of interesting decor.

Chesters Fort was THE place to see in Chollerford. It is another place to stamp Hadrian's Wall passports, and is an English Heritage site. Chesters Fort (Cilurnum) was built in 123 AD just after the completion of the Wall. It guarded a bridge which carried the Military Roman road across the River North Tyne.  It housed some 500 cavalrymen and was occupied until the Romans left Britain in the 5th century. 

The land on which Chesters fort stands was bought in 1796 by a man named Nathaniel Clayton, who leveled the ruins to form a park between his mansion and the river. His son, John Clayton, was of a more curious and scientific mindset. When he succeeded to the property in 1832, he began excavating what his father had buried. He also began acquiring other properties that had remnants of the wall and Roman forts. His nephew, Nathaniel George Clayton,continued the work, opening the Chesters museum in 1896. The museum houses the extensive collection of antiquities discovered by John Clayton at Chesters and elsewhere along the Wall. 

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired history and English teacher. She walked Hadrian's Wall in June 2025. If you'd like to begin at the beginning of this adventure, click here.