Nothing to see here any more, but a red brick and sandstone temple of convenience once stood here, just in front of the railway arch.
This was actually at the end of the street where I grew up. A particularly grim trough, as I recall; Vulnerable to wind-blown litter and leaves, and neglected by the council, I can still see the cracked, browning glaze and 70s graffiti in my mind's eye. A lost gem.
A childhood memory of junior school cricket, played on a long-gone ground now given over to grazing sheep. That was 100 metres down the road from here: This enigmatic sandstone wall, overgrown with shrubbery has was once a public urinal.
You can just about make out the bricked-up entrance and exit. I wonder if the leaf-filled, mossy urinal trough is still behind the wall? One for future archaeologists, I feel.
It was a useful place to have a pee on the way home after cricket, but it's been bricked up for at least thirty years.
It puzzles me as to why it was thought necessary to have public conveniences in such an incongruous place in the first place.
Introduction:
The Victorian and Edwardian planners who designed the Industrial Revolution townscape were visionaries: Foresighted forefathers who understood that working people needed somewhere to take a leak.
In recognition of this necessity, they placed "public conveniences" around our towns - and with as much a sense of civic pride as they showed with their grandiose town halls, public libraries and parks.
In these less enlightened, austere, times, many of these public conveniences have been lost, abandoned, or closed altogether. Vandalism, neglect, penny-pinching and a blinkered disregard for the needs of the people who visit our town centres have seen a catastrophic decline in these once-ubiquitous cathedrals of relief.
Come with me on a journey of discovery in praise of the Lost Toilets of Barrow in Furness.
Much of what follows will mean nothing to anyone reading but it's important for me to try and record the mental screenshots of my journey before they're lost.
Images trigger memories.
You know how songs, or smells or other sensory stimuli have the power take you back to a time, a place, a mood? Where you were, how you felt etc? Who you were, even?
Well, Proust had his madeleines; I have my dead rat.
A dead rat? On Day One of my walk, there was a point at which the footpath (up to then following the line of a former railway) dropped down to the River Tyne. Virtually the first thing I saw was a dead, dessicated rat on the path.
In my head, the image triggers the river, a vague smell of tar, the trees on the opposite bank, the light not-quite-drizzle hanging in the air, the possibility of the Newcastle skyline around the next bend etc etc.
All from a dead rat.
The things in the following list trigger more of these thoughts for me. You may choose to skip it:
Segedunum
Swan Hunter
A gas holder
A dead rat
The Marina
Bacon butty at the Cycle Hub
The bridges
The blinking eye
The Sunday market
The quayside
Business park hell
The Newcastle site at Scotswood
Fenced off guard house
Denton Dene
The glass cone
Asda
The Riverside Park
The Warden on the folding bike
Wylam Waggonway
Bistro En Glaze
The Border Reiver
Puffing Billy
Dead voles on the lawn
Heddon Wall
The Military Way
The A69
The Wall ditch
Robin Hood Inn
Carrot and coriander soup
A German looking for Sycamore Gap
The Vallum looking south
The found walking pole
Planetrees Wall
Chesters
Oystercatchers
Black Carts
Limestone corner
Refreshments at the Mithraeum
Sewingshields
Loughs
Housesteads
Twice Brewed
Sticking plasters
The quiz
A quiet early morning sofa
A packed lunch
The highest point
Distant explosions
The view behind along the crags
Swearing at my own feet
The quarry cafe
Shaking a stick at a hostile cow
Willowford Wall
Avoiding bulls
Brampton Co-op nosey man
A taste of Spain
Black pudding and haggis
Honesty boxes
Chickens!
A Magnum at High Crosby Farm
A beautiful headstone
Crossing the M6
An early morning set off
Lost in Beaumont
A view of Scotland
ENERGY DRINKS!
The Marshes
Journey's end
An old man and his dog
The Solway Viaduct
Sorry about that. Back to the job in hand.
I've been asked whether I had any insights or epiphanies on the journey.
I'd have to say I'm unsure yet. Maybe that will come once I've had time to fully absorb the experience?
The point of the trip for me was to fulfil an ambition, to a degree. The Wall is something I'd fancied doing for a long time. Turning 50 last year gave me a reason to do it this year; I've had one or two weird health things start to rear their heads in the last few years. Perhaps I felt it important to do this walk while still able!
I wanted to test myself physically, enjoy the history and the countryside and give the thing a focus and sense of purpose through raising money for Brain Tumour Research. It's very satisfying to have raised in excess of £800 for them. Nearly £10 a mile!
I have my books and my photos and my T shirt. Soon, I'll receive my badge and certificate.
I tried to approach the walk with open eyes and ears and soak up the experience like a human sponge. I don't know if I entirely succeeded, but that's what the trigger list is for!
As time passes and the memories fade, I hope to use this list to transport me back to the Tyne, the ridges, the hills and the Wall: The Wall, always the Wall; snaking away into the west; over the hills towards the sea and the setting sun.
The only bus back from Bowness on Solway to Carlisle in the afternoon is at 14:15. The plan was to do the last stage of the walk, get this bus, collect my case from the hotel and get a teatime train back South.
I now knew I would have to allow myself a window of 7 hours walking time to account for my slowed pace.
I had considered doing the final stretch back to front: getting a morning bus to Bowness and walking back to Carlisle, but this didn't feel right: I wanted to finish this thing PROPERLY, east to west.
Plus, at the pace I was now going at, I wouldn't have got back to Carlisle till six o'clock in the evening.
The upshot of all this was that I needed to set off walking a lot earlier than I'd done on previous days
Luckily, the shooting pains I was getting in my left ankle had gone. I now only had one knackered foot to worry about and even that was bearable once I got moving. I was also popped up to the eyeballs on cheap Asda Red Bull rip-off, Blue Charge.
The pleasant path out of Carlisle follows the banks of the River Eden as it meanders to the Solway Firth, then cuts across to Burgh by Sands where Edward I died. There's a statue by the village green marking this fact, plus a monument a mile out of the village marking the spot where the Hammer of the Scots popped his clogs.
It's also the halfway point of the day's walk. 7.5 miles to Bowness on Solway.
No Wall here though. All I have is my guidebook reassuring me that this hedgerow here, or that muddy trackway there, closely follows the original alignment. But no matter.
Despite the gammy foot, I found myself making good progress. I crossed the Solway Marsh with its ridiculously long straight flat road (of which the Romans would have been proud) and found I had time for a twenty minute refreshment break at the La'al Bite in Drumburgh.
This sort of place had occured quite regularly along the Wall path in the last couple of days: Ad hoc refreshment spots by farms with drinks, ice cream, crisps etc, picnic tables and benches. Little honesty box oases to cheer the footsore traveler. Full respect to the kind people who provide these services.
Realising I only had a couple of miles or so to go, I pressed on. No time to linger at Port Carlisle and the crumbling overgrown remains of the short lived Carlisle canal - journey's end was around the next bend.
It's surprising how close Scotland is across the Solway at this point. Annan is only about a mile away and looks it at low tide. It really does seem like you could just stroll across. Come to think of it, this is probably something the Romans realised when they built their Wall across to this quiet backwater.
I rounded the final bend and walked into the sleepy village and found my way onto Banks Promenade: Up a ginnel between two houses.
On a tiny terrace overlooking the Solway there sits a little wooden shelter with a bench and a Hadrian's Wall Walk stamping station.
And that's it. The finish line (or start point if you're going East to Wallsend).
No whistles, no razzmatazz. Just a quiet spot to contemplate what you've achieved or what you're about to embark upon.
Which is a nice way to do it, I reckon.
And so today, to all intents and purposes, I say goodbye to the Wall. From Banks onwards, it disappears gradually: From small sections, to occasional crumbling heaps of stones, to barely discernible landscape features, to nothing.
From Walton onwards, there isn't much to see at all of anything recognisable apart from at the rear of Bleatarn Farm where the completely robbed-out Wall foundations are now nothing but a stony trackway. Accompanied by the ever-faithful V of the Wall ditch, it soon fades into the landscape and is lost.
So. On to Carlisle
After relentless trudging through flat Eden countryside, crossing the M6 feels like being back on home turf. The Pennines are well and truly behind me and the Solway coast is only a day's walk away.
It's taking its toll on my feet now, though. Today was the first day I really started to suffer.
I was already experiencing pain in the top of my right foot/ankle/shin area, but today I was getting shooting, burning sensations in my outer left ankle - inflamed or cramping tendons, maybe? It bloody well hurt, anyway.
I was slowed down to a pathetic 2mph hobble at times but I wasn't in any particular hurry today. It was gone 6:00pm by the time I checked in to my hotel in Carlisle.
I knew the last day was going to be tough and I needed to plan what best to do in order to get over the finish line.
Today began with more of the same, crazy up and down crag action as yesterday.
After a 20 minute trudge from the ace Twice Brewed Inn (Where I came third in the Tuesday Night Quiz: Even though I was Billy No-Mates against teams of 4+ people) I began the ascent to the top of Green Slack, at 345m the highest point of the walk.
Despite the continuing undulations, it really is all downhill from here!
Gradually, the crags lessened in frequency and severity as I continued my journey out of Northumberland and into Cumbria, magnificent stretches of Wall and stunning vistas my companions.
But by crikey it was hot! Unlike the previous days' nigh on perfect walking conditions, today was wearying.
This was exacerbated by the fact that today, I needed to be at Banks by 16:45 to get the last AD122 bus down into Brampton for my hotel; all the more convenient accommodation options along the Wall were all booked up months ago.
As a result, I had to miss out on the Roman Army Museum and Birdoswald due to the need to press on. I'll pop back and do these, and Vindolanda, later in the summer.
Despite the heat, there was still plenty to enjoy as I followed the route westwards; the magnificent Wall at Willowford being particularly thrilling as it swept down the slope towards the River Irthing and the bridge abutments there.
I'll have to get a taxi tomorrow to take me back up to Banks. Due to Cumbria County Council cutbacks, the earliest AD122 bus up to there isn't until nearly 11:00 am.
Not much use when you want to be setting off at 09:00!
In other news, my perception about people in Brampton being a little odd was borne out in the local Co-op where I caught the bloke behind me in the queue peering into my shopping basket to see what I'd bought.
