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map showing location of tourHadrian’s Wall Country guided walking holidays

The moors and dales of Northumberland and Durham have rightly been referred to as ‘England’s last wilderness’, and guests on our guided walking holidays always agree that the area is a paradise. The foot soldiers who patrolled Hadrian’s Wall, the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire, would no doubt have found the area rather less agreeable!

Picture of Hadrian's Wall

Picture: Hadrian’s Wall at Steel Rigg

The landscape is a mixture of wide open grassland, heather covered moorland and lush green dales. Hadrian’s Wall marches across the hills taking in its stride a succession of craggy outcrops and undulating hills, each of which affords outstanding views across the surrounding countryside.

Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman forts and settlements associated with it are designated a World Heritage Site, whilst the newly established Hadrian’s Wall Path, which follows the Wall from coast to coast across the north of England, is a National Trail. Three of our walks will follow the very best sections of the new route and highlights will include Sewingshield Crags, Steel Rigg, Crag Lough, Cuddy’s Crags and the Roman forts of Vindolanda, Housteads and Birdoswald.

To the south of the wall is an area of heather moorland interspersed with wooded valleys which offers exhilarating walking under ‘big skies’. The hillsides are punctuated with the overgrown settlements of the small mining communities of yesteryear, the ruins of which only serve to enhance the feeling of loneliness and tranquillity. This wilderness experience is heightened by the tremendous amount of history attached to the area, from that of the early Christians and Norse kings such as Eric Bloodaxe, to the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.

Blanchland, our base for the tour, is an idyllic English village set in a steep sided valley at the head of Derwentdale. The village is built on the site of a Premonstratensian priory and is owned by a charitable trust, to whom the village was bequeathed by Lord Crewe, last of the Prince Bishops of Durham, in 1721.

We stay in the Lord Crewe Arms [ETC/AA/RAC**] in Blanchland. The hotel was originally part of the Abbey of Blanchland, and some of the rooms date from the 12th century, whilst other parts of the hotel were developed in the 17th century by Lord Crewe. The hotel garden, now a scheduled ancient monument, was originally the abbey cloister. The Lord Crewe Arms, which is full of old English character, possesses a ‘priest-hole’ (secret chamber), a crypt and, by all accounts, the delightful ghost of Lady Dorothy Forster, sister of Tom Forster, a leading Jacobite rebel. The accommodation consists of ‘character’ rooms, all individually decorated, whilst the cuisine, which has earned a coveted AA Rosette and an RAC Dining Award, is of a very high standard. All bedrooms have ensuite facilities.