Find out where Dere Street crossed the Stanegate

Coria, two and a half miles south of Hadrian's Wall, stood where Dere Street, the great road north, met the Tyne and the Stanegate, the first east–west frontier line to Carlisle. A fort was built here around AD 84 as part of the Stanegate system, and it grew into the most northerly town in the Roman Empire. The Vindolanda tablets show that locals just called it Coria. English Heritage looks after the excavated town and its site museum.

Corbridge: The Most Northerly Town in the Roman Empire

Housesteads and Vindolanda

Seven nights along Hadrian's Wall and what followed it, from Carlisle Castle and Birdoswald through Housesteads, Vindolanda and Corbridge to Bede's Jarrow, Warkworth, Dunstanburgh and the causeway to Lindisfarne.

Hadrian's Wall and the Edge of the Empire

Hadrian's Wall

Nine nights from Hadrian's Wall to Berwick-upon-Tweed: Housesteads and Vindolanda, the dark skies at Kielder, Alnwick and Cragside, then the castle coast from Dunstanburgh and Bamburgh to the Farne Islands and Lindisfarne.

Northumberland: Hadrian's Wall and the Castle Coast

Walk the fort and find the gates that opened north of the Wall

Go down to the fort's baths by the North Tyne

Look across the river to the abutments of the Roman bridge

See John Clayton's collection in the 1890s museum

Chesters, the Roman Cilurnum, is thought to be the best-preserved cavalry fort on Hadrian's Wall. It was built across the Wall with its walls projecting north and three of its main gates opening on that side, so the cavalry could ride out fast. It guarded the bridge that carried the Military Way over the North Tyne, whose massive abutments still stand across the river; the fort's baths are on the riverbank close to it. The site museum was built in the 1890s for John Clayton's collection from the fort and elsewhere along the Wall.

Chesters: The Cavalry Fort on the Wall

Walk the Wall at Housesteads Roman Fort (Vercovicium), built around AD 124 on the Whin Sill crag, and find its well-preserved latrines, granaries and hospital, where the First Cohort of Tungrians garrisoned the fort from about AD 205

Visit Vindolanda just south of the Wall and see the Vindolanda tablets on loan from the British Museum, and the boxing gloves from around AD 120

Walk the stretch of Hadrian's Wall Path between Steel Rigg and Housesteads on the 84-mile National Trail, opened in 2003

Stop at Sycamore Gap, the dip in the Wall where the tree that stood there was felled in September 2023

The central stretch of Hadrian's Wall runs along the crags of the Whin Sill, and Housesteads, Vercovicium, built around AD 124, is the fort on top of it, with its latrines, granaries and hospital still laid out; from about AD 205 the First Cohort of Tungrians held it. Just south of the Wall, Vindolanda's museum shows a selection of the Vindolanda tablets on loan from the British Museum — more than 1,700 of these ink letters on wood have been found, and they were the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain — and a pair of boxing gloves from around AD 120. The Hadrian's Wall Path, a National Trail since 2003, runs along the crags past Sycamore Gap, where the famous tree was felled in September 2023.

Hadrian's Wall: Housesteads, Vindolanda and Sycamore Gap

Walk the Victorian garden paths up the gorge of the River Allen

Walk on up Staward Gorge through the woods

Climb to the ruins of Staward Peel, the medieval peel tower on its promontory above the gorge

Allen Banks and Staward Gorge is 194 acres of the National Trust in Northumberland, where the River Allen cuts a gorge through woodland. It was laid out in the Victorian period as a garden in the gorge, with paths running up the valley through the trees, and the woods around Staward Peel are a Site of Special Scientific Interest. At the far end, on a promontory high above the river, stand the ruins of Staward Peel, a medieval peel tower.

Allen Banks and Staward Gorge

Walk the 1900s Town at Beamish, the open-air museum first opened to visitors in 1972, with its tram routes, shops and bank

Visit the 1940s Farm, a North East farm on the wartime Home Front

Ride the historic trams and buses around the museum

Beamish, founded in 1970 and open to visitors since 1972, is an open-air museum of the North East: a 1900s town with shops, a bank and trams, a 1940s farm from the wartime countryside, and historic trams and buses to get between them.

Beamish: The Living Museum of the North

Visit the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, in the converted flour mill on the Gateshead quayside, opened in 2002

Take the Victoria Tunnel tour under Newcastle, the 1842 waggonway tunnel that became a Second World War air-raid shelter

Cross the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the tilting footbridge opened in 2001

See Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, 20m tall with a 54m wingspan, beside the A1 in Gateshead

On the Gateshead quayside a converted flour mill opened in 2002 as the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, which tilts to let boats through, opened across the Tyne in 2001. Under Newcastle, the Victoria Tunnel was a waggonway of 1842 that became an air-raid shelter in the Second World War. Beside the A1 south of Gateshead stands Antony Gormley's Angel of the North, 20m tall with a 54m wingspan.

Newcastle and Gateshead: BALTIC, the Victoria Tunnel and the Angel

Walk the walls and gates of Birdoswald fort

Walk the stretch of Hadrian's Wall east from the fort towards Harrow's Scar

Find where the turf wall and the later stone wall diverge

Look down into the Irthing gorge from the fort platform

Birdoswald sits above the Irthing gorge on the stretch where Hadrian's Wall was first built of turf and later replaced in stone, so both lines can be traced on the ground. The fort walls, gates and granaries survive above the river.

Birdoswald: The Turf Wall and the Longest Standing Stretch

Climb through the Percy keep that towers over the village

Find out how Hotspur's rebellion ended at Shrewsbury in 1403

Work out why seven cannon shots were enough when Henry IV came north in 1405

Walk down to the river Coquet round the loop below the castle

Warkworth Castle stands in a loop of the River Coquet less than a mile from the North Sea. The Percys took it in the 14th century, and Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland, added the great keep that looms over the village. He helped put Henry IV on the throne; then he and his son Henry 'Hotspur' Percy fell out with the king and rebelled. After Hotspur was killed at Shrewsbury in 1403 the earl fled here, then submitted and was pardoned; when he rebelled again in 1405 and Henry IV came north, the defenders gave in, the king wrote, after seven shots from his cannon. English Heritage has cared for it since 1984.