I’ve no idea how many times I’ve passed Hadrian’s Wall. I was born in Durham, 20 miles south of it and grew up in Ayr, roughly 100 miles to its north. A significant portion of my extended family lived out their days in the north east of England (some still do) and so multiple times a year, we’d be ferried up and down, passing the Wall each time.
As with many things with which there is such familiarity, I began to take ownership of the Wall. Other properties in my portfolio included Arran, Prestwick Airport, and a giant TV receptor near my grandfather’s house (15 miles south of the Wall) known somewhat unimaginatively as “Grandad’s Aerial.” The day I found out he had nothing to do with the metal spike – the sight of it merely confirmed we were approaching his house – I felt I’d been swindled.
I experienced a similar sense of injustice when, on the only time I can remember visiting Hadrian’s Wall, I found out that not only did it barely exist, but that it wasn’t the border between England and Scotland any more.
An adult – not sure who – told me that it hadn’t been the border for many, many years. I looked at the map, outraged that the current border now lies at a jaunty angle further to the north, giving England even more land – as if they needed it! This gave me the impression that the English were robbing invader-bastards. All this before ever seeing the racist,wife-beating, anti-Semitic, alcoholic Mel Gibson’s epic fantasy Braveheart. If I could have voted, Fat Al would have had my X in a heartbeat.
It turns out the nameless adult who misinformed me as a child was wrong, too. Hadrian’s Wall was never the border between England and Scotland, chiefly because such titles did not exist during the 300 years that the Wall was built, manned and maintained. There was the Roman Empire to its south, and barbarian lands to the north, which the Romans sometimes referred to as Caledonia – land of the Caledonii, "a great, hard people.”
A second common misconception about the Wall is that it was designed to defend against these seemingly unconquerable Northerners.* “Why would you put a gate every mile if you didn’t expect – didn’t want – people to go through it?” asks A Man in A Museum in Carlisle, at the Wall’s western end. The guy is a gigantic intellectual, and I genuinely don’t think I could ask him a question that he would fail to answer, but he’s learned so much for so long that he’s replaced his social skills with all that knowledge. As a result, he’s quite difficult to interact with – I ask easy questions because I’m here to write a travel piece, not a fucking dissertation and each time he sneers and guffaws before answering with far more detail that I could possibly want or need. He also spends a good deal of the conversation leering at Wee Mo, something I fail to notice at the time, but which still nauseates her some hours later.
(*For what it’s worth: another widely touted lie is that the Romans couldn’t or didn’t want to conquer what we now call Scotland. The truth is that they did, for a while, even building a further barrier – the Antonine Wall – which ran approximately between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Further, in 208 Emperor Septimius Severus decided to fix the northern problem once and for all, but luckily for the proto-Scots he died before he was able to see it through. His son, Caracalla, had other things to worry about (like murdering his brother) so withdrew the Empire to Hadrian’s Wall once more.)
Anyway, the Wall: Why build it at all? To keep ancient Brits in? To keep northerners out? To segregate them? To symbolise the power of the Roman Empire? These questions are all asked inside the museum, with modern examples in Berlin, Gaza and Cyprus highlighted to make visitors – especially school groups – think more about frontiers and barriers. “Of course, then there’s a school of thought that Hadrian just liked straight lines on maps,” says Baron von Greenback. “There are no definite answers.”
Perhaps it was built just to show it was possible; perhaps Hadrian was an obsessive, but it seems likely taxation was an important function. Hadrian’s Wall, with all its gates and checkpoints, was likely the world’s biggest toll booth, taxing all who passed through it. The profits were needed to help to pay the tens of thousands of troops who garrisoned Britain until the island became a luxury the Romans couldn’t afford and they began to leave in 410AD.
So there you have it, the comparatively dull truth. It feels even duller when you consider that Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin openly admits that The Wall from his series is directly inspired by Hadrian’s ambitious project.
However, when later that day we visit a relatively well preserved section at Crag Lough, I am much more impressed by its remnants. For reasons I can’t fully explain, scrambling to the top of the crags where the Wall runs atop a cliff face, I still feel like I’m on the edge of a great unknown. What’s now Northumerland National Park, to a Syrian or German (Romans themselves were never reduced to work so dull as manning the Wall) must have seemed unfathomable and frightening.
Standing on the edge of the Wall gives a sense of what it would have been like as a barrier, but flying over it gives us a better understanding of the ridiculous scale to which Hadrian’s men were working. Border Air Training, a small independent company, have been offering Wall flights in rickety wee Cessna aircraft since August last year. They take off from Carlisle and follow the line, where it exists, over to Haltwhistle, taking in some of the best remaining forts along the way.
Despite the marginally increased risks – and the fact that they’re as fuel inefficient as a Hummer – I quite enjoy flying in light aircraft. Wee Mo has never done it before, especially not in something so puny as the Cessna which wobbles with every grunt, scratch and fart. Four of us (the pilot, LaffMo and a representative from Hadrian’s Wall Heritage) can barely fit in, knees round our ears, like fucking Noddy. I really don’t think it’s too bad, but the involuntary, fearful noises that escape Wee Mo and are broadcast over our headsets suggest she thinks otherwise.
