Hadrian’s Wall…our Walk Across Northern England

Beginning in AD 122, the Roman Emperor Hadrian decided it would be a good idea to build a wall across what is now northern England, as a means of border control and to prevent raiding. The wall was to become a fortification that stretched roughly 120 km from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east, to Bowness-on-Solway on the west.

Today, only remnants of Hadrian’s Wall remain. Much of the stone has been repurposed for roads and other structures. But some footings, forts and turrets remain…and the Hadrian’s Wall Path is a popular hiking path in England.

We decided a hike across Hadrians’s Wall would be a great chance to see part of England we hadn’t previously visited. So, late in 2024, we started planning to hike across Hadrian’s Wall.

There are many guidebooks available for the Hadrian’s Wall Path, and we won’t give an endorsement here — in fact, we were not especially happy with the guidebook that we chose, so do your homework!

Our guidebook did break the path down into chunks depending on how many miles you want to walk per day, or how many days you have to spend walking. We chose eight days of walking and followed the advice for finding accommodations accordingly. What we did find, is that many “Self-Guided Tour” companies (these companies will book your accommodations, and transport your luggage point to point… for a substantial fee) book out rooms months in advance of the popular hiking seasons, so if you are booking on your own, there may be “slim pickins” left.

By February, however, we had managed to find various inns, B&B’s, AirB&B’s, and hotels to stay in. Most were very close to The Wall Path, but for one we walked 2 km off the path to the B&B, and the other, we called on the phone and they sent a car to pick us up 3 km away.

There are many small villages along The Path, so food and places to stop for meals is not a problem. A couple of B&B’s packed lunches for our next days hike. And… usually there was a nice pub to visit nearby. If not… one B&B arranged free transportation to the nearest village with a pub! Pub culture in UK… gotta love it.

The walk is by most accounts considered “moderate” difficulty. And overall, we would agree. Much of the time, the walk is through idyllic green pastures with sheep and cattle. Quite a few stiles and gates to go through, but not a problem.

There are some places that are a bit more challenging.

Toward the middle of the walk are hills … probably not what you could call mountains, although sometimes it seemed so. Steep, rocky climbs up. The “up” wasn’t really the problem.

There are also steep, rocky climbs down. For some of us who don’t really like heights anyway, and some of us who are visually impaired (see previous post), these downs seemed treacherous. We made it, mostly unscarred. Thank you, hiking poles and grippy hiking boots.

A sad aside…for those of you who have seen Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves… there was a famous, 160-year-old sycamore tree at a place on the path called Sycamore Gap. A couple of years ago, two demented morons on a drunken night out cut down the historic tree. Today, only the stump remains. It is a sad place, but there is some hope as a sign points to a sprout that is coming up from the stump. Maybe in another 160 years, it will be as it was.

Along the route, we met many kind people, and particularly the hosts at the inns and B&Bs. On one detour we took off the trail to see a monument, we ran across a man working on his car. He started up a conversation with us, about the area, the restaurants, where he was from, where we were from… such a nice conversation with a complete stranger. We met him again the next day at a pub in the next town, and, again had a nice conversation. Kind of restores your faith that people really are kind and worth meeting.

Finally at the end… at Bowness-on-Solway. It is a beautiful little village on the estuary. Tides coming in can be dangerous, so be careful walking near the water. There can also be “quicksand”… We didn’t go out to the water since it was a bit chilly, and instead found a nice pub to spend some time in before walking back to Port Carlisle for our B&B.

The next day was the fairly uneventful trip home. A bus ride to Carlisle… a train to Euston Station in London. In reality… an interesting “replacement bus” to Preston, where we got our (delayed) train… finally… back to London.

It was a great… albeit challenging… week of hiking. Not to be missed!

Blustery start to 2025 in London

The new year in the United Kingdom is coming in with a blustery blast. Today in London we’re seeing heavy rain, strong wind, a generally unpleasant environment. Looks like our plans for a walk to central London may be on hold until the storm passes. Northern England and Scotland are getting even stronger weather – a big winter storm to begin the new year.

Windy, sheets of rain, chilly – all in all, a brisk start to 2025

There was a massive fireworks show in central London on New Year’s Eve. We decided not to brave the huge crowds, and spent a quiet evening in our apartment. We do have a nice view of Greenwich and the southeastern London skyline. At midnight, it seemed the whole city that we could see erupted in fireworks. The sight and sound was amazing.

Fortunately, the rain held off for a nice New Year’ Eve
Some snacks for a quiet celebration at home

So, we’ve started a new year. For me it will be another year of work in London. Looking forward to the work challenges that will come, and likely some travel to various places in the world.

Living abroad has been good for us. We loved our time in Japan, and are now enjoying life as London residents. This part of our lives will come to a close far too soon, so we want to make the most of our time in the next year. We’ll share some of our experiences in this blog, so stay tuned – more to come.

Christmas 2024 in London

A medical issue caused us to cancel our planned trip to the US for Christmas. So this year, we’re spending our Christmas and New Year holidays in London.

Regent Steet

Although we greatly miss spending time with the family, London is known as a great place to be during the Christmas holiday. There are some amazing light displays. And if you’re interested in shopping (we aren’t), Christmas markets abound, in addition to the plethora of shops that offer boundless opportunities for holiday buying.

Transportation for tourists
Oxford Street Christmas Lights

We do a lot of walking, and have seen many of the popular Christmas light displays. We also visited a Christmas market, complete with mulled wine.

Mulled wine on a chilly evening
Covent Garden

Christmas Day was a quiet one for us. A short walk in the neighborhood. Later in the day, some video calls with family (adjusting for the 5-hour time zone difference).

And, a traditional Christmas dinner. Well, maybe not traditional in the common sense. We’re having Christmas sukiyaki. Having lived in Japan for several years, we love the Japanese hotpot meals. That is our delicious Christmas dinner, rather than the fowl and dressing.

Merry Christmas to all…and best wishes for the New Year!

Our Christmas dinner sukiyaki

Winter Solstice 2024… in London

The year is winding down… and today, 21 December, is the Winter Solstice. The shortest day of the year. The beginning of astronomical winter.

The good news is…the days will start getting longer. It has been an incredibly grey, dismal, drippy, chilly, windy past 6 weeks. I can count the number of days of sunshine on one hand…and still have some fingers left over.

London is located at about the same latitude as Newfoundland…similar to Warsaw. Kiev, Winnipeg and Calgary. So in the winter, the sun kind of goes sideways across the sky. The sun never gets higher than 20 degrees above the horizon. Weird light, and always in your eyes as you walk down the street.

Today we went to a Winter Solstice celebration at the Greenwich Observatory – the first such event ever held. Greenwich is the Prime Meridian, and home of the 18th century astronomical observatory. Interesting place to go, and inside Greenwich Park, a large green space south of the Thames River.

This year, due to a medical issue, we will be spending Christmas in London for the first time. We will miss time in the US with our family. But we’ll make the best of it here in our London home.

And as the Solstice passes, we are looking forward to the days getting longer again. Having sunrise at 8 am and sunset before 4 pm is getting very old. We even have resorted to using a daylight lamp in the house to simulate daylight (particularly as we’ve seen so little of the sun during the past several weeks).

There are still some months of winter left, and probably a fair share of cloudy, misty, windy and cold days. That’s part of living in London. And yes, we are adapting to our adopted home.

December, 2024

A few months have gone by since our last blog post. It has been a tumultuous time. The days seem to merge into weeks and months. Some of the time has been good…some not as good. Let me try to catch up.

Overall, my job is going well. Much to do, not enough time for it all. Pretty much business as usual. We did our big meeting in Abu Dhabi in September and it went well. The months after have been busy but manageable.

The US election was disappointing and now we have a new administration ahead that we can’t see as anything but cataclysmic. It is hard to view from abroad. And we know that we will need to do something in a year or two. Where to go when my contract here expires? Of course the default is the US – that is our country of origin. But is that the best? Looking at other options but all are difficult. Where will we go as we enter retirement? Still no answer.

London – Our one year anniversary

A year ago, we arrived in London, the first day of our new 3-year adventure as British residents. The year has gone by amazingly fast. It’s been a good year overall…but of course, there have been ups and downs.

We settled into our apartment with a 3-year contract, planning to stay in the same place for the duration of my work assignment. A couple of weeks ago, our landlord informed us he was using the early-break clause…he wants to move into our flat, so we have to move to another apartment by 21 August. And so, we’ve begun the arduous task of finding another place to live…one that we can call home…and most challenging, one that will accept our cats (the British landlords seem to have difficulty allowing pets in many apartments).

Looking back, it is a bit amazing that we came through this transition with some sanity still intact. Selling our house and most of our possessions in the US was traumatic. Moving 3 cats was maybe even more challenging…all the paperwork and process, flying to Paris so the kitties could be with us in the plane (thanks to our daughter, who came with us and was invaluable to the process), and great support from Happy Saluki, a company that specializes in transporting animals. The kitties adapted well and love their new home. Sadly, one of our older kitties, Sadie, got sick a few weeks ago and in April died. We miss her greatly.

After 8 hours in their carriers on the plane from Atlanta to Paris, the kitties were allowed out in the seat of the Happy Saluki transport van

And so, we are now looking for a new place we can call home for the remainder of our time in London. We will find a place…it is just stressful and annoying to go through the process again.

Looking back, did we make the right decision to leave our big house, all of our possessions, and move to a small apartment in UK? The answer is a qualified, “Yes.” There are times when I think of some item…usually something not very significant…and wonder, did I sell that? Is it in storage back in the US? Is it lost? And occasionally I miss the life we left in the US.

But yes, we made the right decision. We had become disillusioned by the area we lived in the US, the politics, and the indifference. This move allows us to see a bit more of the world in the remaining years that I’m working. Although I could retire at any time, I’m not yet ready. I want to keep working, and maybe making a difference for a few more years in my company. My contract has less than 2 years remaining. Maybe it will be extended, maybe not.

And what of the future, after this adventure is over? That’s something we are starting to consider, but the answer isn’t yet clear. We’ll keep updating our blog as we continue along this path to discover our future.

Sadie is no longer with us, but Sasha and Garrett enjoy their kitty beds by the windows. Now, to find another apartment we can all enjoy as our home…

London – 9 months in…

It’s been over 9 months since we relocated to London. It has been kind of a weird transition … from Tokyo back to Atlanta, then selling most of our possessions and moving full-time to London. After 9 months, it is feeling a lot more familiar. We have our favourite places to walk…restaurants…pubs.

Working for a British-incorporated organisation, I’m slowly and reluctantly adopting the British spellings (organisation vs. organization, etc.). Have to admit, there are still times when we struggle to understand British English. Some of the accents, and some of the slang, just doesn’t work in our American brains (I’m still struggling with “gobsmacked,” not to mention the Cockney accent).

It is enjoyable to see some of London that is off the tourist paths. We particularly like to walk along the Regent’s Canal, a part of a huge, intricate canal system that goes through the city. Interesting narrow boats, lots of historic areas, and just an enjoyable place to take a long walk and not feel like you’re in the middle of a big city.

Narrow boat on Regent’s Canal

The weather…well, it is England. Lots of days of cloudy, damp sometimes rainy, drippy, glop. What I didn’t expect was the wind. It is often really windy. Reminds me of growing up in Kansas, but with more drizzle and chill.

We have pretty much adapted from living in a 4,000 sq. ft. house in Atlanta to a 900 sq. ft. apartment 20 floors above the Quay (canal that was once used for shipping in this docklands area). It’s really kind of surprising that we don’t miss our big house more. We do have to be more careful about what we buy and how much stuff we have, as there isn’t a lot of extra space. But somehow, that really hasn’t been a big adjustment. Maybe because this apartment is actually about twice as large as our apartment in Tokyo. And there are some advantages…a lounge/terrace on the 56th floor, and a really nice gym and pool/spa facility. One major irritation — when the wind is really strong, the building has a dampening system to mitigate the sway of the tower. Effective, but it sounds kind of like a thousand irritated squirrels climbing on rusty springs in our ceiling.

View from the top floor lounge of our building.

My job has been interesting and demanding, always with too much to do and not enough time to do it. But I enjoy it, and hope that I am contributing to the organisation. My contract is for another 2 years…we still don’t know what we will do after that. Retirement…back in the US…somewhere else…just not sure where to go. But that’s a decision for a later time.

For now, we’re trying to take advantage of every day we have here. Seeing all we can in London…taking some local trips (Winchester and Alfriston have been really good ones). I still have travel with my job, which means an upcoming business trip to Tokyo (with a few personal days’ trip to Vietnam). So much to see, so many places we want to go.

Winchester Cathedral

So, nine months into this part of our life experience, I have to say I’m glad we made the decision to move to London. It hasn’t always been easy. But nothing in life is. It is an unusual opportunity, and we appreciate the chance to take advantage of it.

Home (?) for Christmas Holiday 2023

We went “home” for the Christmas Holiday this year. I say “home” because this is the first Christmas  we’ve gone back to the US after we sold our house and most of our belongings and relocated to London.

Our miniature Christmas tree from Japan…Now relocated to our home in London

During the 4-1/2 years we lived in Japan, we went back to the US for Christmas all but one year. But it was back to our house, where our daughter was living. It was different, being in our house but our daughter’s home, but still familiar.

Then when we came back from Japan, we moved back into our house. But the Christmases in 2020 and 2021 were impacted by COVID, so not really “normal.” In 2022, the family did gather in our house for what we later would realize would be the last time.

This year, we all spent the days before Christmas together in two rented cabins at a local state park. It was nice, and I think everyone enjoyed it. It was very different for us, but maybe not as difficult as we thought it might be coming back “homeless” in the US for the first time.

One of our daughters graciously hosted everyone for Christmas brunch at her home, and it was wonderful. And we stayed with her for the short time before our return to London. Our other daughter in Atlanta hosted her brother and sister and their families, taking over the role we have played as a place for the family to gather for a few days.

All in all, we enjoyed this Christmas holiday. It was very different, but we still are thankful for the time together and the many, many blessings we have.

With Christmas over, our family is again dispersing… some to the Northeast, some in the Atlanta area, and us back to London.

We all have rich memories of growing up as a family… of celebrations in three different family homes over the years. Now we are making new memories, as the next chapters of all our lives unfold.

It is so tempting to dwell on the times gone by, and the memories we would like to revisit… and maybe even sadness or regrets about the things/places we no longer have. And there is a place for that, but not for too long. The future is before us and we must make it the best we can… as individuals, as our separate families, and as the “big” family that has grown up and matured over the last four decades.