The Classic Crossing

Start at Segedunum Roman Fort in Wallsend, where the wall once ran right down to the Tyne, the viewing tower is worth twenty minutes before you take a single step west. The first hours follow the river on surfaced paths through Newcastle, under the famous bridges and past the quayside cafés; navigation is as simple as keeping the water on your left.

Beyond the city the path climbs gently away from the Tyne through Newburn and into farmland. There's no visible wall yet, this stretch is about settling your legs and your pace. Heddon-on-the-Wall greets you with the first substantial fragment of the real thing.

A day of quiet farmland walking beside the line of the B6318 Military Road, which sits on the wall's foundations for miles. The ditch and the vallum, the great earthworks either side of the wall, become your companions, and you learn to read them in the fields.

Landmarks come steadily: the ditch at Wallhouses, the Portgate junction where Dere Street crossed the wall, and a gradual sense of leaving the lowlands behind. The day ends dropping into the North Tyne valley at Chollerford, with Chesters Roman Fort, the best-preserved cavalry fort in Britain and its famous bathhouse, a short stroll from the bridge.

The day everyone comes for. Out of the North Tyne valley the path climbs steadily past Black Carts turret onto open moorland, and at Sewingshields the Whin Sill begins: a rollercoaster of short, sharp climbs and descents along dolerite crags, with the wall riding the edge beside you and views that stretch to Scotland.

Housesteads, the most complete Roman fort in Britain, sits right on the path. Beyond it come Milecastle 37's fine arch, Crag Lough's cliffs, and the now-famous gap where the Sycamore Gap tree stood. You finish at Once Brewed with the day's effort written into your calves.

The shortest walking day, and one of the finest. The crags continue over Winshield, at 345 m the highest point of the whole trail, then Cawfields' knife-edge wall above the quarry lake, the Nine Nicks of Thirlwall, and Walltown's superb crag-top masonry.

You descend past Thirlwall Castle's scavenged-stone ruin to Gilsland, straddling the Northumberland–Cumbria border. The Poltross Burn milecastle behind the old station is one of the best-preserved on the wall and most walkers march straight past it, with a short day, you needn't.

The crux of the crossing. The longest continuous stretch of standing wall leads out of Gilsland to Birdoswald fort, high above the Irthing gorge, give it a few minutes; you won't pass better-preserved wall. Then the geology relents entirely and the day becomes a long, low march through Cumbrian pasture and quiet lanes, the wall now a buried presence carted off centuries ago to build Lanercost Priory and half of Carlisle.

The path joins the River Eden for the final approach, arriving in Carlisle through Rickerby Park. Eighteen miles is a long day after the crags, pace it, and let Carlisle's castle, cathedral and Tullie House museum be tomorrow-morning's reward rather than tonight's obligation.

The final day leaves Carlisle along the Eden and heads out onto the Solway Plain, flat, wide-skied, and utterly different from everything before it. Through Burgh-by-Sands, where Edward I died on the marshes waiting to invade Scotland, the path runs along the shoulder of the estuary road across open saltmarsh.

Scotland sits close enough to touch across the firth. The trail ends at the little pavilion on the shore at Bowness-on-Solway, the site of the Roman fort of Maia, quiet, salt-scented, and a properly remote-feeling full stop to 84 miles.