HADRIANS WALL: WINNIE THE POODLE’S BIG ROMAN ADVENTURE

Hadrians Wall Path is an 83 mile (actual miles not silly Roman miles) or 135km long walking path stretching from coast to coast across Northern England (Just South of Scotland). It begins (or ends) in Wallsend – Newcastle on Tyne and ends (or begins) in Bowness on Solway, Cumbria.

Hadrian was an emperor who demanded a defensive wall be built of approximately 18 million hand-cut, shaped and fitted pieces of stone, almost entirely locally quarried and all in AD122. It stretches almost from coast to coast and was used as a complex system of defence by the Roman province of Britannia (England) in the South, against warring tribes in Caledonia (Scotland) to the North. Conquering Scotland has never been easy for anyone, especially not the Romans who struggled to consolidate any gains, by retreating from conquered land when it got too cold.

Winnie is a poodle – almost two. She’s been in training for her first multi-day back packing trip for the last few weeks and as such has been purchased a very expensive backpack (Ruffwear Front Range Day Pack) and tent which will fit a long-legged orange poodle who takes up all the room.

Winnie, like Hadrian is a curly haired ginger, who likes men. She’s popular with her troops and likes to expand her empire. And, like Hadrian she will have one of her skivvies carry most of her gear.

I’m told, its not particularly challenging and that there are nice pubs littering the route almost as frequently as the mile castles which were built and historically manned every mile, (Roman mile) along the wall. Winnie likes pubs.

Planning has been minimal. We will drive to Bowness (our end point) leave our car and take public transport to the East (Newcastle), then walk back. We’ll camp, other than a night in Carlisle. We’ll carry food and top up at every single shop pub and tea room we see along the way. It should take us 6 days.

Winnie will carry a day of food at a time, a dog shouldn’t carry more than 25% of their weight and need to be trained before carrying any amount of weight. While Winnie may manage 5kg, she’ll only carry 1kg as she doesn’t really like carrying anything and is a princess and I love her. We’ll keep our milage at 15-ish per day with a big break for lunch so she can have her midday nap.

We’ll send dog resupply packages to a pub which we pick up at the end of day two, and to a tea room which we’ll frequent on day four.

Winnie will also have my Z-Lite Sol as her mat, a micro fibre towel in case she gets ferrell, and her favourite moon and starts blanket for comfort. We’ll also use her running lead with hip belt attachment so she can remain attached to us (not chasing sheep/walking above our daily mileage) and we can be hands free.

Given that we ran out of money buying Winnie all manner of new paraphernalia, the only personal splash-out was to test the BRS Hornet. I’ve made two cups of tea so far and it seems a wild success. Knocking 50g off my MSR pocket rocket this has nicely made more room or Winnie’s bacon strips.

The walk begins August 14th. We’re excited for a low key, low mileage trail, Snake Legs will of course be in tow and most likely doing Roman impressions along with our new favourite family addition, have I mentioned Winnie yet?