The Story So Far: Everything Before I Walk 84 Miles Across England Along Hadrian’s Wall - Anglotopia Podcast | Discussing UK British Travel, History, Culture, London, British Slang, and More! | Lyssna här

This is a special one. Recorded on home soil just days before departure, this is Jonathan Thomas's complete pre-trip briefing before he leaves to walk the entire 84-mile length of Hadrian's Wall — coast to coast across Northern England. It has been fifteen years in the making. Jonathan walks through the whole story: the conversation with his wife a year ago that set everything in motion, the year of training that followed, why he chose this particular trail, and how a long-held someday became a definite date on the calendar. He then goes deep into the logistics — the Macs Adventure app and luggage transfer service, his full ten-stage itinerary from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, why he's walking east to west, the "day zero" plan to get the first five miles out of the way, the gear he's packing (and the beloved Ordnance Survey maps he's leaving behind), and the tradition he's borrowing from the Wainwright Coast to Coast. Finally, he lays out everything coming down the line: a ten-episode podcast series sponsored by SplashMaps, social posts from the trail, mini-documentaries, articles, a possible book, a possible revival of the Travels in Britain video series — and the extra week in England afterward, taking in the Settle & Carlisle line, four days in York, a day out in Yorkshire with Tim Barber, Castle Howard, and a final stretch in London that includes Buckingham Palace, the Ceremony of the Keys, the Wallace Collection's Churchill exhibition, and a recording of next month's What's On in London from inside Emery Walker's House.

The Anglotopia Hadrian’s Wall Hub — Progress Tracker & All Content

Links

The Sponsors

Previous Anglotopia Episodes Mentioned

Anglotopia Background Reading

The Trail Itself

Places on the Itinerary

The Week After the Walk

Follow Along

Takeaways

This walk has been fifteen years in the making. Deep in the Anglotopia archive is what Jonathan calls "the graveyard of my ambitions" — every previous attempt to start training for Hadrian's Wall that never became a trip. The difference now is life stage: what would have been an enormous ask with a young family in his twenties is achievable in his forties with teenagers who can manage without him for two and a half weeks.
The trip exists because of a single conversation. About a year ago, Jonathan's wife Jackie told him she could see something was wrong and that he needed to do something about it. What came out of that conversation was a plan: get to England, do something big, and train for it. A year later he's roughly forty pounds lighter, knows he can walk long distances because he has, and says he's been happier this year than he's ever been — before even setting foot on the trail.
Two sponsors made it happen. Macs Adventure — a self-guided walking and cycling specialist — planned and booked the entire trip, which is what made it financially possible in the first place. SplashMaps, the fabric map company Jonathan has been a fan of for a decade, came in last May to sponsor the forthcoming ten-episode podcast series, and has commissioned a special Hadrian's Wall map for the Challenge Series in collaboration with Anglotopia.
The Macs Adventure app is the centerpiece of the self-guided model. It holds the full itinerary, all hotel and booking details, day-by-day route overviews, downloadable offline GPS mapping, weather, luggage transfer information, and — Jonathan's favorite feature — tips left by other walkers who have done the same stage. Because of it, the treasured Ordnance Survey maps and guidebooks are staying home.
Luggage transfer changes everything. Each morning the suitcase goes down to hotel reception by 9am and is moved to the next hotel, meaning Jonathan only carries a day pack with camera, laptop, microphones, water and snacks. This is also why he's traveling carry-on only for the entire two and a half weeks.
The route runs Wallsend → Heddon-on-the-Wall → Corbridge → Chollerford → Once Brewed → Gilsland → Haytongate → Carlisle → Bowness-on-Solway, over ten days. Jonathan is walking east to west specifically for the experience of walking out of a city into open countryside — an idea that came directly from the Quintin Lake and Macs Adventure guide episodes.
"Day Zero" is the smart move. Rather than face a fifteen-mile first day, Jonathan is arriving in Newcastle a day early, collecting his Hadrian's Wall passport at Segedunum in Wallsend, and walking the first flat five city miles back to his hotel — leaving a more manageable ten miles for day one proper. He notes that even ten miles will be the longest single-day walk of his life.
He's borrowing a tradition from the Wainwright Coast to Coast. Walkers there dip their toes in the North Sea at the start and the Irish Sea at the finish. Since the Hadrian's Wall Path doesn't start at the sea, Jonathan is taking the Tyne & Wear Metro out to Tynemouth to dip his toes in the North Sea before beginning — and will do the same at Bowness-on-Solway if the tide is in.
There is a great deal of content coming, and almost none of it will be published from the trail. A one-off Macs Adventure episode arrives in September, followed by the ten-part SplashMaps-sponsored series starting in October (after the six-part Jane Austen series in September). Expect two podcasts a week for the rest of the year, plus reels, mini-documentaries, articles, photography, a possible book, and possibly a revival of the Travels in Britain video series — which quietly accumulated half a million YouTube views over the years.
The week after the walk is a trip in itself: the Settle & Carlisle railway line and the Ribblehead Viaduct, four days based in York including the National Railway Museum, a full day exploring Yorkshire and Castle Howard with Tim Barber from the Real Yorkshire Tours episode, then London for the Ceremony of the Keys, Buckingham Palace State Rooms and East Wing, the Wallace Collection's Churchill exhibition, a recording of next month's What's On in London from inside Emery Walker's House, and a celebratory dinner with Anglotopia's columnists.

Soundbites

"This is the last episode that I'm recording on home soil before I leave for Britain to walk the entire length of Hadrian's Wall. Or as I've been telling people who don't know what Hadrian's Wall is — I'm walking across England, quite literally, from coast to coast." — Jonathan opening the episode.
"If you go deep into Anglotopia's archive, you can see the graveyard of my ambitions — all the times I tried to begin training for Hadrian's Wall and failed and never went and did it." — Jonathan on fifteen years of false starts.
"We had a conversation that was basically life changing. It's the kind of conversation you can only have with somebody who's been your partner for twenty years." — Jonathan on the moment a year ago that set everything in motion.
"If I had attempted to do this walk a year ago in the shape I was in a year ago, I probably would have ended up in a hospital somewhere in northern England, which would not have been good." — Jonathan on a year of training.
"I'm actually not that interested in the history so much anymore. I'm interested in the walk." — Jonathan on how his relationship with Hadrian's Wall has shifted over the past year of research.
"I'm looking forward to starting in a city and literally walking out of a city. I've never experienced that before. And then walking into the open countryside. There's a romance to it that I feel like is really appealing." — Jonathan on why he chose to walk east to west.
"They were in the Durham area in a village called Shincliffe. This is the landscape they inhabited, and it's the landscape they left and came to North America and never went back to. So this is kind of me going back and understanding this landscape that they felt like they needed to leave." — Jonathan on the ancestral connection running underneath the walk.
"I'm not going to do a few miles and then get on the bus and get to the next trailhead, because that's not doing it. I'll never be able to live with myself that I went through all of this to go do this and then I didn't do it all." — Jonathan on why he's taking the full ten days.
"Thank you for talking to me a year ago and making me realize I needed to make some changes and needed to do this — because I have been the happiest I've ever been and I haven't even gone on the walk yet." — Jonathan's message to his wife Jackie.
"If you've got something big you want to do, do it. You can just do things. So get on with it." — Jonathan's closing thought before departure.

Chapters

00:22 Introduction — The last episode before leaving for Hadrian's Wall
01:25 Thank You to the Sponsors — Macs Adventure and SplashMaps
02:43 Fifteen Years in the Making — The graveyard of ambitions in the Anglotopia archive
03:38 A Year Ago — The conversation with Jackie that changed everything
04:25 Training and Health — Why the walk became a goal worth building a year around
05:02 An Amazing Year — Where the training got him and how he's feeling now
06:09 Why Hadrian's Wall? — Roman history, Game of Thrones, and a frontier where civilization stopped
06:59 What Actually Interests Him Now — Less the history, more the walk itself
07:53 Walking Out of a City — Why east to west, and the appeal of Newcastle
08:27 The Durham Ancestral Connection — Shincliffe and the landscape his family left
09:08 Not a Natural Walker — Hating gym class, and finding walking as the least bad option
10:41 The Indiana Problem — Busy county roads, trail apps, and some surprising discoveries close to home
11:35 Someday Becomes Now — Goals, accountability, and being public about it
12:32 Macs Adventure Comes On Board — When booking confirmations made it real
13:06 Meet Hudson — The Irish setter bought to encourage the walking, and the most handsome misbehaved dog imaginable
14:36 A Bigger Deal Than One Episode — How the walk grew into a ten-part series
15:33 SplashMaps Comes On Board — And the special Hadrian's Wall map commissioned for the trip
16:13 Planning — The library of Hadrian's Wall books built up over fifteen years
16:59 The Ordnance Survey Maps — Laid out across a basement floor, and why they're staying home
17:31 The Macs Adventure Welcome Packet — Luggage tag, guidebook, and what arrived by Royal Mail
17:51 How Luggage Transfer Works — Bag to reception by 9am, day pack only
19:15 The Macs Adventure App — Offline mapping, itinerary, hotel details, weather, and tips from other walkers
21:42 The Itinerary Begins — Flying from Chicago, arriving early, and a buffer day
22:17 Lumley Castle — A 14th-century castle hotel in Chester-le-Street for night one
22:57 Beamish — Squeezing in the living history museum if jet lag permits
23:56 The Geography of the Walk — Wallsend, the Roman line, and where the trail actually runs
24:15 The Hadrian's Wall Passport — Collecting stamps along the route
25:06 The Ten Stages — Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, stage by stage
26:01 East to West vs West to East — Why the Quintin Lake and Macs Adventure episodes settled it
26:54 Day Zero — Getting the first five city miles out of the way on arrival day
27:41 Ten Miles on Day One — The longest single walk of his life
28:25 Dipping Toes in Two Seas — Borrowing a tradition from the Wainwright Coast to Coast
30:43 The Tyne & Wear Metro — Newcastle's underground, and the train nerd's excitement
31:23 A Boring Walk? — Why Jonathan disagrees with the guidebooks about the Newcastle stretch
32:03 Building a Rough Itinerary — TripIt, research, and accepting he can't see everything
33:19 What He Wants to See — Sycamore Gap, Lanercost Priory, Carlisle Castle and Cathedral, an aviation museum
34:05 The AD122 Bus — Why nothing is truly missed
35:00 Ten Days, Not Four — Taking his time and refusing to skip sections
36:01 The Weather Forecast — Sixties and seventies Fahrenheit, and rain almost every day
36:21 Gear — Boots, walking shoes, waterproofs, day pack, and the Columbia socks he trained in
37:45 Carry-On Only — Two weeks of clothing in a carry-on, and why no walking poles
38:42 The Twice Brewed Inn — Once Brewed, the Dark Sky Park, and hoping to see the Milky Way
39:45 Cameras and Microphones — What's coming in the day pack
40:09 Anglotopia Hats and Green Glasses — And a thank you to his parents
40:42 What's Coming — Content plans for the next year and beyond
41:06 The Macs Adventure Episode — Coming in September
41:52 Why He Won't Publish From the Trail — Lessons learned from Land's End to John o'Groats
43:05 The Ten-Episode Series — Recording twenty to thirty minutes at the end of every day
43:26 Release Schedule — Two podcasts a week for the rest of the year, after the Jane Austen series
44:17 Social Media From the Trail — Instagram, Facebook, Threads and Bluesky
44:34 Mini-Documentaries and Reels — Filming now, editing later
45:08 Friends of Anglotopia First — Podcasts, articles, updates and photography
45:20 A Book? — Undecided, and the problem with middle-aged men writing about walking
46:24 Travels in Britain — The old Rick Steves-style series that quietly got half a million views
47:33 After the Walk — An extra week in England
48:00 Why Jackie Isn't Coming — A tree fell on the house in May and reconfigured the summer
48:57 Leaving the Day Before School Starts — And how that happened
50:11 Making Wine From Sour Grapes — Doing things his wife would hate
50:22 The Settle & Carlisle Line — The Ribblehead Viaduct and one of Britain's great railway journeys
50:54 Four Days in York — Finally doing the city properly
51:33 The National Railway Museum — Enjoying it thoroughly and alone
52:14 A Day Out With Tim Barber — Castle Howard, a ruined abbey, and the North York Moors
53:18 On to London — Staying with a friend
53:38 Emery Walker's House — Recording next month's What's On in London on location
54:07 The Ceremony of the Keys — Finally doing it after years of wanting to
54:22 Exhibitions — Frida Kahlo, Whistler, Star Trek, and knowing he can't do it all
54:43 Buckingham Palace — The State Rooms and the newly renovated East Wing
55:14 The Wallace Collection Churchill Exhibition — Booked months ago
55:29 An Anglotopia Dinner — Meeting the columnists in person
55:57 What He'll Miss — The Bayeux Tapestry press view and a February return
56:31 Closing Thoughts — A year ago this wasn't happening, and now it is
56:44 Thank You, Jackie — The person who made it happen
57:22 If You've Got Something Big You Want to Do — Just do it
58:03 How to Follow Along — Friends of Anglotopia, the Hadrian's Wall hub, and the progress tracker
58:57 See You on the Other Side of the Wall

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