Day 64 of the End to End in 2019 began at the random postbox in Cumbria and proceeded north through Carlisle. It was there that I crossed the Wall. Of course the actual wall is no longer there but there are plenty of signs, two thousand years later, that it was.
For its whole length the most persistent sign of the Wall is the ditch or Valuum. You can see signs of this in Carlisle and of other Roman structures. There are also sign posts for the Hadrian’s Wall Path, which I had walked on a few years ago in 2017. The moment when you cross over the line of a route walked previously is a great feeling as you gradually link into a network of routes you have been pacing all over the country.
The Wall was one of the things the Roman’s did for us. Nearby is the village of Burgh by Sands, that I also visited in 2017. It is thought to be one of the first places in Britain where people from Africa lived, in around the 3rd century.
Some folks like building walls, others aspire to do so. Me, I’d rather be a wall crosser. I love the Wall country, the wide open skies, the random piles of stones and their interpretation panels, the way our understanding has changed and developed over two thousand years. There may be a wall here but its history is anything but static. New stuff gets unearthed, ditches give up their stories, we understand things differently. African people first lived in Cumbria a long time ago and Black Lives Matter. We are unearthing new understanding all of the time.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus asked ‘Which of you, when your donkey falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, doesn’t pull it out again, rather than leave it there?’ (I once did this one with some RAF and RN Chaplains in 2007).
‘Tell me the old , old story…’ (a song)
Make me a Wall Crosser like you, Jesus.
JAL 16.06.2020 in Longdendale.