HWP Day 1: Segedunum to Newcastle

While our Hadrian’s Wall Path itinerary from Macs Adventures has us walking from Segedunum to Heddon in one long 17+ mile day, we arrived in Newcastle a day early to split the first walking day into two and see a bit of Newcastle while fighting the jet lag. Yesterday evening’s gentle stroll took us across a couple of the bridges over the Tyne and past Newcastle’s not-so-new castle.

After a restful night and having resolved our two minor issues of a blocked sink and a travel eSIM not working in a phone, we were ready to start the walk. However, on the first day, we were starting where we would end (i.e. a hotel in Newcastle) , and needed to take a train to “Wallsend,” which I’m sure you can tell is appropriately named. But first, there was an obligatory stop on the way to the station:

The Segedunum visitor’s centre had just opened when we arrived a bit before 10. We stamped our HW passports, bought a T-shirt (so now we have to walk it) and paid to enter the museum. The view from the 9th floor over the remains of the fort and the shipyard were the highlight. They had a simulated Timelapse video of what had happened to the fort, and how buildings and roads had been built over it before an archeological dig in 1997. The area had been part of the very large Swan Hunter shipyard which is no more. The museum had lots of artifacts. Walking the grounds, there was the outline of what used to be there, but we needed to walk to the other side to get our first glimpse of the real wall alongside a reconstruction of what the wall would have looked at.

It was good to do a museum at the beginning, as I’m not sure how much we will want to do while walking. It was nearly 11am and time to get on with this walk! So we took the obligatory selfie at the start point and headed off.

Pretty wildflowers border the trail too:

The acorn symbol marks the path:

The path heads downhill and soon we are walking along the banks of the River Tyne:

Arriving at the river reminded us of Newcastle’s industrial past. We walked along a stretch of the river across from an old tar plant. We were advised of the river’s toxicity and you could smell the tar that had seeped into the ground from the plant, despite remediation efforts. We passed abandoned industrial sites and then thriving manufacturing facilities owned by Siemens, TechnipFMC, and Baker Hughes, likely serving the offshore energy industries. There was a sense of the city trying hard to reinvent itself as its industrial focus changes. This sense evolved as we entered the city, dominated by the multiple bridges over the river.

We walked under all of the bridges before heading away from the river to our hotel, to shorten tomorrow’s walk when we will rejoin the path where we left it. This made today’s walk from Segedunum a bit less than 7 miles taking a little over 2.5 hrs, not including a stop for a sandwich. After a short rest, we headed off to the Great North museum which has a model of the whole wall. This was an interesting walk seeing other aspects of Newcastle, passing through China Town, past the Eldon Square shopping centre, and along the edge of Newcastle University.

The evening concluded with a fine dinner at Blackfriars Restaurant, set in a refurbished friary that dates back to 1239. Our jet lag led us to eat at 5pm when they had plenty of spare tables and early specials, including a mighty fine sticky toffee pudding.

And that was day 1. While it lacked a sense of accomplishment as we ended up where we started, it was a great warm-up day with some fascinating insight into Newcastle’s history over the last century, complementing the history from 2000 years ago. we were blessed with fine weather and tomorrow we head to Heddon-on-Wall.

This blog post is linked to from my Hadrian’s Wall Path page.

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