Hadrian's Way: Newcastle Centre to Heddon-on-the-Wall 1/9/2005**

 

Angel of the North   Common puffballs   Heddon-on-the-Wall

From the centre of Newcastle we walked down a few industrial streets past rows of car show-rooms to reach the bank of the Tyne once more.  We followed this all the way by Elswick in front of new office blocks to the end of the Riverside Walkway.  The tide was further out than yesterday, revealing more mudflats with gulls and waders (redshank in plenty, a few curlews).  By the British Airways car-park we took the trail to William Armstrong Drive, named after the main industrialist in this area.  From the sidewalk we got our only glimpse of Gormley’s “Angel of the North” crucified upon the Gateshead skyline.  At a major roundabout we crossed to the other side of Scotswood Road and followed this west beside noisy traffic.  It was a relief when the path rose a little beyond a belt of trees that screened off the vehicles.  This was the site of a disused railway beneath the concrete un-enterprising monstrosity of Whitehouse Enterprise Centre.  This led to the remains of Scotswood Station where a cobbled street no longer accessible to traffic ran down alongside a high wall with ferns and lavender, while puffballs grew between the cobbles.  Here the railway entered a tunnel, so the path moved a little south and we emerged along a green slope, reclaimed drift coal mines, with Whitfield Road at the top, where stood a Whitfield’s removals van and a poster advertising Whitfield Antiques.  From here we crossed a sports field and a footbridge over the thunderous traffic of the A1 dual carriageway before descending across more green lawns past many magpies (appropriately in a city where men even wear black-and-white striped shirts to do their gardening).  Yesterday’s papers had been celebrating Michael Owen joining Newcastle.  A housing estate was bisected by the green wooded valley of Sugley Dene Nature Reserve, although one could hardly tell this from the blank notice-board, vandalised like much else here, the paths littered with broken glass and plastic black patches from burnt-out cars.  Next came Lemington with its distinctive conical pottery kiln, a landmark from miles away, and, still on roads, Warburton’s Bakery, whose baking smelled more appetising than their ultimate product.        Suddenly we found ourselves again beside the Tyne at The Boathouse pub and we just had half a kilometre to go to The Keelman pub and the start of the Tyne Riverside Country Park, which was busy with families.  We took a little food and home-made bitter at the pub, an accessory to the Big Lamp brewery, created in an old water pumping station.  We then continued along the river, still very wide here, with harebells and marsh hawksbeard in the grass.  There used to be a ferry across but only a small wooden stump marks the old landing-place on this side, whereas upstream diagonally opposite still stood the ferryman’s house with a boat moored outside.  We joined a bridleway known as Wylam Waggonway for 150m, but then followed a footpath across a golf course and up a hill through woods, winding up not too steeply to Heddon on the hilltop.  The views back to Newcastle over the Tyne Valley are splendid from here.  Housing at the village edge overlooking the same view was rich and over-wrought, but more modest village streets led to shops including the splendid Dingle Dell Café for afternoon tea.  From here it was a long walk to the reason the village is called “-on-the-Wall”, a well-preserved section of Hadrian’s Wall some 100m long, to a height of six courses in places.  Some of the facing-stones, square-hewn, showed the characteristic grooved tooling and between the neat outward-facing lines were large rough stones heaped up as infill.  We again disturbed a wall butterfly basking on the warm stone.  We walked back to Newburn to the pub again, where we are staying, for English grub washed down with luscious Big Lamp Brown Ale.