Day 4 – Gilsland to Eden Bridge

The night in the Greenhead Youth Hostel was an experience to say the least. On arrival the night before, after 22 miles of ups and downs along the wall, and with every inch of ours bodies crying out for a nice hot shower, we were informed by the owner “sorry, but the boiler has blown so there is no hot water at the moment”. Cold shower all around then, brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.


After this then Alan and Rob were woken at 1.30am (Simon was out for the count and not even a bomb going off would have roused him) by a still unknown man wandering into our room and picking out one of the spare bunks in our room! How strange. As Rob’s mobile phone alarm went off to wake us all up the following morning the guy jumped up and legged it for the door, never to be seen again. Still not sure what was going on, must have just been a Roman fantasist. Ahhh well glad we could help.

Some of us, that hadn’t been woken up by our intruder, were feeling fresh as a daisy to start day 4 and led the way along the wall. Heading for Birdoswald fort took as up and over Willowford bridge. The fort was the site for us to collect our 4th passport stamp of the walk so we stopped, stamped and took a few pictures of the remains of the fort. Not a great deal of it left now but there is a fortified manor house on the plot that is in the process of being converted to a YHA and is due to open in July so we only just missed out on staying there. Might have found that this place, being new, wouldn’t have had beetles scurrying across the cold showers. Oh the luxury!

After a quick break at Birdoswald to take on some water, we continued to Banks. Off of the wall now, we followed a narrow road through Banks village passing Bankshead farm. At this point, we are sorry to say, the Roman’s got lost. Yep, don’t know how we managed it but the trail, usually symbolised with an acorn sign at each style, suddenly stopped leading the way and off we went in the wrong direction. Not a great thing to happen after the mileage we’d done in the last few days, not to mention the mileage still to come. Realising the mistake the proper navigators, the ones that can actually read maps (Alan and Rob) got together to get us back on track. And that they did. A little ‘detour’ through Lanercost and we were firmly back on track and the acorn symbols reappeared.

Rejoining the wall now at Walton Wood we trekked on to meet Andrew who was waiting patiently at the Centurion Inn pub, much to his disgust though it didn’t open till 5.30pm. On the approach to the car we spotted that the same group of guys that had been tracking us the whole of the previous 3 days were now parked in their Landrover awaiting the arrival of their friends. We haven’t mentioned them until this point but they actually started out with us on day 1 at Wallsend, pulling into the car park at the very start only minutes after ourselves. They have told us that they have since seen us at Housesteads museum on day 3. Then today we saw them, and stopped for a chat, at Birdoswald, then a tower close to Birdoswald and now here at the Centurion!

So onwards from the Centurion. We soon got into our stride and began to push on with a lot of speed, flying on to Newtown 2 miles on and then four more on to Crosby-on-Eden. We covered these six miles in two hours. Much to Andrew’s amazement we arrived at his car an hour earlier than he had expected. Again he was sat out a pub, which was closed. (Oh dear) The support car for our fellow walkers we kept bumping into was parked in the car park again. We explained to their driver that we were now giving one final push to complete our intended 18 mile day and take us to Eden Bridge.

On we went trying to maintain the same speed with the wind at our backs and the sun in our faces onwards to Eden Bridge on the outskirt of Carlisle centre. This stretch is only 4 and bit miles and we wern’t feeling too bad, so we pushed on. Soon astride the River Eden, we found ourselves with a new friend. Shep the half blind sheep dog, was struggling to see his owner, who had traversed further up the bank, Shep kept us company for sometime, until the owner finally came back to find out were her dog was! Onwards and following the River, the walk was pretty undescript, the only high point being wading across a path of running cow poo, gross. Onwards and soon over the M6 and heading into Rickerby village. From there, through the park and towards the bridge over the Eden. We had to follow the riverside path, all the way round to Sands leisure centre. Alan managed to find a slight shortcut, to forestall his painful completion to todays journey. Arriving at the centre, stamping our cards and enjoying a very well deserved pint. Andrew arrived not much later and we headed off for our overnight stay at Vallum Barn.