The Story So Far: Everything Before I Walk 84 Miles Across England Along Hadrian’s Wall

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 Macs Adventure — Hadrian's Wall Path Walking Holidays Macs Adventure — Hadrian's Wall Path East to West, 9 Days SplashMaps SplashMaps — The New Hadrian's Wall Challenge Series Map (Anglotopia Collaboration) Previous Anglotopia Episodes Mentioned Episode 70 — Tips on Walking the Hadrian's Wall National Trail with Emily Graver of Macs Adventure Episode 87 — How to Walk Hadrian's Wall with Quintin Lake Episode 82 — Your Travel Guide to Britain in 2026 Tim Barber — The Real Yorkshire Tours Episode Dr. Lucy Davis — Winston Churchill the Painter at the Wallace Collection What's On in London: August — Including the Ceremony of the Keys Anglotopia Background Reading Anglotopia's Big Plans for 2026: Walking Hadrian's Wall and More Training for Hadrian's Wall — The Full Archive Jonathan on the SplashMaps Adventure Habits Podcast Friends of Anglotopia Club — Everything Posts Here First The Trail Itself Hadrian's Wall Path — Official National Trail Hadrian's Wall Passport & Stamps Segedunum Roman Fort, Wallsend — Where the Walk Begins Vindolanda Roman Fort & Museum AD122 Hadrian's Wall Bus Service Cicerone Guide — Hadrian's Wall Path Trailblazer Guide — Hadrian's Wall Path Places on the Itinerary Lumley Castle Hotel, Chester-le-Street Beamish — The Living Museum of the North Tyne & Wear Metro Tynemouth Priory & Castle — English Heritage The Twice Brewed Inn, Once Brewed Northumberland International Dark Sky Park Sycamore Gap — National Trust Lanercost Priory — English Heritage Carlisle Castle — English Heritage Carlisle Cathedral The Week After the Walk The Settle & Carlisle Railway Ribblehead Viaduct National Railway Museum, York Visit York Castle Howard, North Yorkshire Emery Walker's House, Hammersmith Ceremony of the Keys, Tower of London Buckingham Palace State Rooms & East Wing Tour Winston Churchill the Painter — The Wallace Collection Frida Kahlo — Tate Modern James McNeill Whistler — Tate Britain Star Trek at 60 — Science Museum Follow Along The Anglotopia Hadrian's Wall Hub — Progress Tracker & All Content Anglotopia on Instagram Anglotopia on Facebook Friends of Anglotopia Club 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 Video Version