Join Professor Jim Crow on an exploration of the raw beauty and richly-layered history of this most distinctive English region. Few areas so large come to be defined by a single work of man, but the Wall Country has had a special character since the Romans first set this magnificent work in progress. Experience a warm and welcoming countryside of ever-changing views, from bustling medieval market towns, through farmland and craggy rocks to beautiful views of thick woods and wild loughs.

Your encounter with the long history of this region begins as the Romans, after forty years in the north, built their mighty Wall, marching mile after mile across the neck of Britain, disregarding hills, rocks and rivers and definitively marked the land to the south as Roman.

With the end of Roman rule, the ruins of the Wall became the homes of farmers, strongholds of lords, hide-outs of thieves and the building material of churchmen. The story continues with the Anglo-Saxons and then the stretching north of the great kingdom of England, marking the landscape with beautiful churches and gripping it with castles. In time, the border was pacified, and the hazards earlier people faced became part of the magnificent tapestry of a border history which drew people to a now-peaceful and beautiful country, inspiring Scott, Kipling, Turner and William Morris.

This tour of Hadrian's Wall offers a wealth of experiences: a remarkable landscape, a deep history, the stern traces of Roman power, the fascinating contact with individual lives left in the organic finds at Vindolanda, the aesthetic beauty of Cragside or Lanercost priory, the reminders of its dangerous past and the fantastic local food and drink. There is no better place to begin an exploration of England’s long history, beautiful countryside and cultural richness.

Highlight

• Discover a Roman landscape unique in Britain for its diversity and scale.
• Encounter Romans, Anglo-Saxons,Vikings, Medieval Warlords, sinister Reivers and Victorian Romantics
• Travel with Jim Crow, a Professor of Classical, Roman and Byzantine Archaeology