Hadrian's Wall Tour
"Walk the Wall in the time of Hadrian"
Seventeen people are waiting for you on the Wall
It is 128 CE. Hadrian’s Wall is six years old and still being built. Walk it from the Solway marshes to the Tyne, or the Tyne to the Solway, and at every stop you meet someone who lives or works right where you are standing: a centurion at the western end, a beer-brewer in Carlisle, a soldier from Syria on the crags, a doctor at Housesteads.
You do not listen to a guide. You talk to them. Ask what they eat, who they answer to, what they think of Rome, what frightens them. They answer as themselves, from what they would actually know in 128 CE.
Talk, don’t just listen
Ask anything you like. Each character answers in their own words and their own voice, about their own life — the work, the weather, the gossip from the next fort.
They remember you
Come back and they recognise you. They pick up where you left off, and they know who else you have met along the Wall.
Earn their trust
Strangers get the polite version. Keep talking and they open up — and the people who come to trust you will tell you things they keep from everyone else.
Every stop opens with a scene
As you arrive, you hear what this exact spot was like in 128 CE before you meet the person who lives there. Seventeen places, seventeen scenes.
Real places, real history
Every stop is a site you can stand on today, from Bowness-on-Solway to Wallsend. The people are reconstructions grounded in what was found there — letters, tombstones, altars and the forts themselves.
Who you’ll meet
17 stops, one person at each, living their own life on the frontier. Listed west to east, but start at either end: nothing in the experience depends on the direction you walk.
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Bowness-on-Solway
Decimus Flavius
Centurion at the Wall’s western end. Thirty-two years in the army.
Maia — western terminus of Hadrian's Wall
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Drumburgh
Senorix
Carvetii farmer. Third generation on the same Solway fields.
Coggabata — small fort on the Turf Wall
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Burgh-by-Sands
Julia Sabina
Freedwoman and courier, carrying private letters north from Londinium.
Aballava — fort by the tidal Solway crossing
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Carlisle
Julia Cassia
Brews the beer for the Carlisle garrison, and keeps her own books.
Luguvalium — fort and growing town south of the Eden
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Stanwix
Tiberius Lupercus
Cavalry decurion in the Ala Petriana. Thirteen years in the saddle.
Uxelodunum — largest fort on the Wall, home of the Ala Petriana
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Birdoswald
Lucius Marcellus
A raw recruit, five days into his posting at Birdoswald.
Banna — Hadrianic stone fort above the Irthing gorge
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Gilsland
Nia
A Carvetii woman whose world runs from Carlisle to the South Tyne.
Wall stretch between Banna and Magna
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Willowford Bridge
Publius Atilius Crescens
Keeps the Willowford bridge standing against the River Irthing.
Roman stone bridge carrying the Wall over the Irthing
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Walltown Crags
Gnaeus Verecundus
Legion stonemason, dressing stone on the crags.
Whin Sill dolerite — and the sandstone quarries below
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Steel Rigg / Once Brewed
Barates of Hama
A soldier from Hama in Syria, a very long way from home.
Whin Sill viewpoint above Vindolanda
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Sycamore Gap
Senovara
Brittonic storyteller who lives in the shadow of the Wall.
A dip in the Wall between two crags (no sycamore tree yet)
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Housesteads
Aelia Marcella
A medica — a woman doctor — at Housesteads.
Vercovicium — milliary cohort fort on the Whin Sill
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Carrawburgh
Verecunda
Keeper of Coventina’s sacred spring.
Brocolitia — Coventina's Well, the spring shrine
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Chesters
Claudia Severa
Wife of the cavalry prefect at Chesters.
Cilurnum — cavalry fort beside the North Tyne
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Corbridge
Licinius
Merchant at Corbridge. Twenty-three years on the road.
Coria — supply town at the junction of Dere Street and Stanegate
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Heddon-on-the-Wall
Lossio
Votadini scout from north of the Tyne.
Broad Wall section — Votadinian country north of the Tyne
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Wallsend
Gaius Marinus
Beneficiarius at Wallsend, counting what comes up the river.
Segedunum — eastern terminus where the Wall meets the Tyne
Be first on the Wall
The Hadrian’s Wall experience opens soon. Join the early access list and we’ll email you the day it opens, with founding-explorer pricing.