18 miles/29 km

Total miles: 198 miles/318 km

Today marked the end of the Pennines themselves. Contrary to what you might think, the Pennines themselves have their northern boundary at Round Hill and Wain Rigg. From there, the Pennine Way will track eastwards tomorrow across Hadrian’s Wall before beginning its final northwards push to the border.

We had a good rest day at Alston after some big mileage days but were ready to start hiking again after our break. The walk out of Alston was uneventful enough tracking along the South Tyne before heading northwest.

The first real point of interest today was the Roman fort of Epiacum. This was built to defend the key roads in the area and is the highest stone built Roman fort in Britain. Little now remains other than the earthen ramparts but at the time it had a small garrison of 500 soldiers stationed there as well as its own bath house. Nowadays it takes some imagination to recreate what it would have looked like in its heyday. The remains have not been subject to any extensive archaeological review so there is no doubt many Roman artifacts waiting to be discovered after 2,000 years.

From here, the trail passed under several viaducts being good examples of Victorian engineering. They were built for the Newcastle to Carlisle railway in the early 1850s but had closed by 1976.

The Pennine Way then mirrored the route of an old Roman road and the track of the Maiden Way as it made its way northbound. The walking was interesting, but not the spectacular views and epic days we had experienced over the past few days. The good part was that the elevation changes were relatively benign today which made progress generally fairly quick.

As we reached Lambley Common, we could see the end of the Pennines. Instead of hills and moors, all we could see was farmland ahead. All that remained of the Pennines was Round Hill ahead. Here the going turned extremely boggy and the path disappeared, sometimes completely.

It was impossible to keep dry feet on this section so we were glad when it was over and we reached farmland again. From there, it was a relatively quick walk for us to reach Greenhead, our stop for the night.

Tomorrow we begin our eastward stretch across Hadrian’s Wall, a short stretch of just 10km to set us up nicely for Bellingham, Byrness and then the Scottish border.