It’s been a little while since we last posted further details of our efforts so far and things have moved on nicely since then so we thought we’d bring you up to speed.
Well we have now officially confirmed Martin House Children’s Hospice as the worthy cause for which we are taking on this huge task. We met with a representative from Martin House, Amanda, back in November and she was thrilled that we had decided to do this. We explained all what we are hoping to achieve and she has kindly arranged a letter of confirmation to show that Martin House are happy to have our support (and your donations!) The letter can be viewed right here on the blog so feel free to take a look.
Since we had the foundations in place with Martin House on board we set out to get things rolling by trying to come up with a route to follow over our 5 day hike (and no, it’s not just a case of following that big wally looking thing). We needed have a realistic target point to walk to on each day. Somewhere that would ensure we could get there in the time we have available, but also somewhere that we can be sure would have some sort of B&B available for the night. Pub time! We gathered around a table, pint in one hand, map in the other, and surveyed the Hadrian’s wall trail for the best sites to take shelter for the night.
“Right starting point, Wallsend, obviously, and then on toooooooooooo, Heddon-on-the-Wall??”
“Yeah looks good to us, ok write that down……another pint?”
“Yep!”
That’s pretty much how it went for most of the night till we decided on our final target points along the route. We’ll be walking from;
Wallsend to,
Heddon-on-the-Wall to,
Chollerford, on to,
Gilsland then to,
Eden Bridge and finishing in,
Bowness-on-Solway.
The route being as it is (planned for the best places to stay rather than just breaking the walk up into equally sections and just seeing where we finish means that some days walking will be longer than others. Our days will range from 17 miles up to a maximum of 22 miles meaning that all being well that should mean we complete our walk on Friday 26th June.
Now we have the charity and the route we needed to look at sourcing our armour. Strangely enough there isn’t much call for authentic Roman Legionnaire Armour anymore! So finding a supplier that actually still produces these was a task in itself. A google search produced a great result for us in the Ermine Street Guard, a Roman military re-enactment group formed back in 1972. What they don’t know about the Romans isn’t worth knowing so we emailed them to ask advice and how to get our hands on some authentic Roman armour. They very kindly came back to us with all sorts of great advice from how to wear the armour in the most comfortable way possible, how they get on wearing it for longer periods of time and some contacts we could get in touch with to try and get the costumes we were after. We sent off a few emails and waited eagerly for replies.
We’ve been trying to source our costumes for a week or so now and without great success. Most of the places we had contacted would usually loan costumes out for re-enactments or for use in TV shows. Clearly then, when we started talking of walking in them for 5 days straight, we were told that their service probably couldn’t help due to type of event we were planning. Doh! Back to the drawing board it would seem, that is until Alan made a break through and found a place online that sells replica Roman armour! Result!!
We have contacted the website to see if they had 3 Segmentata (body armour to you and me) and 3 helmets available. Thankfully they do and we are looking to arrange collection of them as soon as we can. We’ll update again soon to let you know how we get on collecting and, most importantly of all, putting on our new kit and seeing if it is as uncomfortable as the Ermine Street Guard have warned us. Sure hope not!
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