Start of the Trail

This is the first installment of my notes dump from the Hadrian's Wall trek...

On Tuesday, July 8th, we took the train to Newcastle, England, which was a two hour ride from Edinburgh, and then the metro to Hadrian’s Lodge Hotel at Wallsend. The “hotel” was a little dumpy but the folks were nice. We walked to lunch at a local pub, where the guys at the bar said “GEEZ!” when I told them we’re doing the trail in seven days. (Kathie’s comment – “Loved the pubs!”)
After lunch, we visited the reconstructed wall portion across the street from Segedunum. Segedunum was a fort, the layout of which is on the ground. It was kinda hard to imagine what the actual fort was like.
Then we walked five miles along the Tyne river, where there were lots of wild flowers – foxglove, thistles, stinging nettle (OUCH!). Tetsu did lots of sneezing; Hisako snapped lots of flower pics.
Finally, we came to Newcastle. On the river is a pedestrian bridge that the locals call the “winking eye” – the semicircular pedestrian walkway arcs up to “close” on the superstructure archway to let river traffic through. Quite cool.
This is just one of about seven or eight bridges in this smallish city. On the other side of the river is the Sage Gateshead, a center for musical education, performance and conferences, which struck me as a glass version of the sandworms in the Dune trilogy. Weird but nifty.We hiked up to the castle, then on to find dinner at a little Greek restaurant called Café Neon. Quite good it was, too! Afterward, we walked to the metro station for a train back to the lodge. There were oodles and gobs of flowers in front of the train station – most impressive. Why can't we have flowers in front of our train stations?