This is another walk from Donkin’s Pennine Way book, one of three covering the stretch between roughly Gilsland and Housesteads where the Pennine Way coincides with some of the more attractive parts of Hadrian’s Wall. But Donkin’s description starts the walk from Steel Rigg, while I started out at Housesteads. From here I followed the wall west for about half a kilometre until I reached the point where the Pennine Way veers off north towards Scotland. I followed it but nowhere near that far. The lady at the Housesteads visitor centre had advised me it could get terrible boggy round here and I was happy to believe her though for me today happily not so much, the ground being frozen. When I got to a track just east of East Stonesfolds Farm, I left the Pennine Way to follow it, past East and then West Stonefolds, then leaving the track to follow a permissive path to a hide beside the Lough. I spend a few minutes in here peeking curiously out but the Lough was frozen today and there wasn’t much bird life about.
Thereafter the permissive path follows the edge of the wood for a bit then heads out over duckboard paving the boggy land near the lake. When I came to a branching I went right and headed up NE to meet the track between Greenlee and Gibb’s Hill. The route wasn’t always very clear and I lost the path a bit but found my track soon enough and followed it to Gibb’s Hill where it becomes a road leading uphill to a junction where a left turn took me to Steel Rigg. It’s a fair step back to Housesteads from here – Peel Crags, Highshield Crags, Hotbank Crags and the visitor centre was closed and the light was fading fast when I got back.
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