Travel: Dodging cows and funny looks when walking the Antonine Wall

In the middle of the night after the first day of walking I lay very much awake in a tiny tent, concerned about the lightning strikes that appeared to be getting ever closer as a storm raged. My attempts to convince the children that no local crazies that would attack wild campers on the outskirts of Glasgow had also started me thinking.

To distract me, I reviewed the events of our first day of walking.

It had certainly been interesting but my attempts to explain to my children the dramas of Roman history had come a poor second to the dramas of being chased by a herd of cows and being nearly decapitated by the overhanging branches of a trailer pulled by a speeding car.

And this was just the first day. I wondered if I could leave my little band through two more days of this without a mutiny taking place. There were already grumblings in the ranks.

The origin of our mini-adventure began when I returned to Scotland after many years away. I visited a few local sites along the Antonine Wall, and then looked into walking the entire route. To my surprise there was no official path. I found one book dedicated to walking alongside the wall, but it did not cover all of it. This all seemed a far cry from Hadrian’s Wall around which a whole industry has sprung up.

From maps I could see the line of the Antonine Wall was clearly marked. I was also lucky enough to obtain advice from David Crone, a teacher who had dressed up as a Roman soldier and completed the route in only 15 hours. However it began to dawn on me that to walk the route faithfully would require dragging three children (aged 10 to 14) across motorways, industrial estates, golf courses, woods and rivers.

It was therefore with a sense of unease that I led our little group off from Old Kilpatrick – the western edge of the Wall that lies by the Clyde. Despite it being one of the hottest days of the year, the first few miles were relatively easy, passing under a subway and then along lanes and fields before entering residential streets.

We attracted a few odd looks – evidently walkers carrying tents are rarely seen in these suburbs. My 14-year-old son asked if the whole walk was going to be like this and I promised the countryside was around the corner. I gritted my teeth as my youngest daughter, who had never walked more than five miles, asked how many more miles there were to go. I suggested it was not wise to think in terms of miles, whilst internally counting down how many miles we had to go.

In Duntocher we reached the site of a Roman fort in Golden Park. Between chunks of chocolate I attempted to tell my children about the history of the wall. The Emperor Hadrian had built his famous wall just 40 miles to the south of us. However after he died, he was succeeded by Antoninus Pius – a little known character today, but who in my view deserves to be more celebrated. During his 23 year reign he was a stable, decent ruler who helped Rome enjoy one of its most prosperous periods.

The one big exception was Britannia. For some reason lost to us, Antoninus Pius decided the tribes of southern Scotland (known as Caledonia) needed to be subdued. After this had been achieved he ordered a new frontier wall to be built across the country. This replaced Hadrian’s Wall as the new northern frontier of the Empire – just a small part of an astonishing 5000-mile boundary that stretched as far south as North Africa.

Construction of the new wall began from around 142 AD and took 9000 soldiers less than a decade. It consisted of a deep ditch behind which stood a 4-metre high turf wall. Every two miles or so stood a garrisoned fort, with some smaller ‘fortlets’.

Around about the time of Antoninus Pius’s death the Romans decided, again for reasons lost to history, to abandon this new wall. They retreated to Hadrian’s Wall, leaving its Scottish counterpart to slowly rot away. Much of Hadrian’s Wall – made of stone – still stands. By contrast, having been built of turf, the Antonine Wall has largely disappeared. Its remains are a much greater challenge to find, as is finding any walkers attempting to follow its path.

As we pressed on from Duntocher the going got tougher and we began to wilt in the heat. At one point we had to fight through fields of tall, wet grass and nettles, all taller than my youngest daughter. Then we had to jump across a burn, get over a barbed wire fence – the first of many - and push through a thick bank of thorny bushes before climbing up a very steep incline to reach the top of Castle Hill – the site of another fort.

We had our lunch here, and I went off alone to find a route down. When I returned I could hear conspiratorial murmurings from the children that stopped suddenly upon my arrival. I began to wonder when, not if, they would begin their mutiny.

The view from the top proved the Romans took advantage of natural features, and many forts were situated on hills that allowed a good vantage point. We pressed on through the genteel streets of Bearsden, visiting the substantial remains of a Roman bathhouse and (by the cemetery) the stone foundations of the original turf wall.

Leaving Bearsden was tricky. We had our first experience of something I had been dreading - walking along a minor road with little or no pavement. For safety reasons – after the incident involving the trailer - I took the first of several detours along fields that ran parallel to the road, however this was not risk free.

On the first occasion a herd of cows began to show a disturbing amount of interest in our little band. I was forced to sacrifice myself in a diversionary move that could have come straight out of the Roman army’s training manual, whilst my children sprinted across the field emitting a combination of giggles and terrified screams.

To avoid traffic we later cut down to the tow path of the Forth & Clyde canal to Kirkintilloch. Here, we stopped by Peel Park, the site of another fort, and were just too late to visit the small museum by the kirk. Instead we revived our flagging spirits with, appropriately, an Italian meal of pasta at the Mariana restaurant, the staff kindly navigating around our own wall of rucksacks.

Whilst wild camping in Kirkintilloch might have been entertaining, it was not a realistic option and it took considerable effort to leave the restaurant and plough on. We eventually made it to Bar Hill, the site of the highest fort on the route and certainly one of the most atmospheric places. With some foundations still visible, it was easy here to imagine Roman soldiers drawn from around the Empire guarding the northern frontier.

We pitched our two tents and were rewarded with a beautiful sunset over the hills to the north. In the twilight bats dived around, blisters were attended to and burnt hot chocolate served. However this literally was the calm before the storm and thunder and lightning was soon heading our way.

It was still raining hard in the morning and we were forced to pack up our tents and eastwards trudge, sodden in our ponchos. So far it had been difficult to get a sense of what the wall was really like, however east of Bar Hill was a good section of the deep ditch dug by the Roman soldiers.

After the struggle we had faced getting tent pegs in the stony ground, we began to realise how difficult it must have been for those soldiers to dig out such huge amounts of soil and rock with shovels.

While my children had been initially disappointed there was no vast stone wall to see, they began (with me) to start recognising other sections of what was clearly the long ditch dug by the Romans. We saw hardly any other walkers during our three days so had all the less well known sites more or less to ourselves.

Sections of the ditch and old Roman military road were visible near Cumbernauld and later on at Seabegs Woods. Walking was easier when parts of the route overlapped with the John Muir Way and other trails, but this was intermittent.

Our spirits rose during the day as the weather improved, and it was dry and sunny when we reached Rough Castle in the early evening. This is regarded as the best preserved site of a fort and we found what we thought was a quiet spot to camp and cooled our tired feet in the burn.

By this stage my youngest daughter wanted to go home. I did my best to encourage her – telling her not many 10-year-olds could say they had walked across Scotland. Nothing. Then I got realistic. Her brother and sister would make her life a living hell by teasing her how about how she had not completed the walk when they had. She decided to sleep on it.

Later a number of tour parties touring Rough Castle approached what I thought was our secluded camp, some taking photographs of a tired-looking family hanging wet socks from branches. My apologies to all of them for what they witnessed.

The next day was our third and last. My wife arrived to collect our rucksacks and deliver our black lab. Her facial expressions suggested we looked a little rough. I half expected my children to make a mad dash for the car as she drove off, but to their credit they stood grimly and awaited their marching orders.

Unburdened by kit, we almost floated through Falkirk, stopping at Callendar House to see another section of the Antonine Wall ditch and also visit an excellent small exhibition on the wall. There was a tricky moment crossing under the M9, and we received concerned looks from motorists as we edged along the verge of a busy roundabout in driving rain.

When we saw the refinery at Grangemouth we knew we were nearing the end. We passed the only visible remains of a fortlet at Kinneil House and then dug deep to reach the finish line in Bo’ness. I mentioned to my children that the Romans had also built a defensive line of forts further north and it might make a good walk one day. My wife arrived before things turned nasty.

This is a fairly challenging walk to do with children, however we were rewarded with a real insight into the Antonine Wall. My children learnt more about the Romans than they would ever have done in the classroom. For good or bad – it was a trip they won’t forget.

It seems a shame a single national pathway has not been developed – I am sure if it was many more people would embark on a similar journey through Scotland’s ancient past.