The beauty of slow travel

Earlier this year, my Mum suggested a walking holiday along an “old wall” in northern England.

I can’t say I jumped at the idea.

It wasn’t until we watched Robson Green’s documentary about the wall that I began to see its beauty and its appeal. This “old wall” is called Hadrian’s Wall, and it was built almost two thousand years ago by the Romans. It stretches 117 kilometres from the east coast of northern England, to the west, close to the borders of Scotland. Essentially, it was built to mark the northern frontier of the Roman empire, and it was used for about three centuries while the Romans ruled.

Nowadays, Hadrian’s Wall is a patchwork of surviving stone and gentle ruins. In some stretches, it still stands several meters tall, while in others, only low foundations remain to mark its ancient path. Today, the wall forms one of England’s most popular long-distance walks. A fun fact I learned this week is that George R. R. Martin (author of Game of Thrones), was inspired by Hadrian’s Wall when imagining “The Wall” in his novels.

What surprised me most about the walk wasn’t just the history, though. It was the silence. Hours of walking without music or distraction makes you notice things differently. The call of birds you can’t quite identify, the rustle of the leaves in the wind, the way light filters through branches or spills across rolling fields of green. You begin to see the subtle shifts in the landscape with every mile. Your mind grows quiet, while the world around you grows loud.

Every morning, we’d slip into our hiking clothes, lace up our boots, and set off along the wall. In the evenings, we’d settle into a cozy old British pub, always serving hot food and a glass of red wine (a necessity!) Most days, we covered around 20km, leaving plenty of time to pause and admire the wall, the Roman forts, and the homesteads that once dotted the landscape.

I found myself wondering how these people lived, especially how bitterly cold the winters must have been. I imagined what it would have felt like to be a Roman soldier, stationed on the wall, staring out across the vast land toward Scotland. As I thought about the harsh life they endured, I tried not to complain about the blisters forming on my own feet!

Most of my recent travels have been incredibly hectic, trying to see as many places as possible in the shortest amount of time. However, this holiday with my Mum was slow paced, and the miles we walked were purely by foot. There’s a real gift in walking. Because it’s not just the distance you cover, but the space it creates in your mind. Slow travel grounds you, it makes you feel more aware of the world around you. Suddenly, your problems feel far away, replaced by the warmth of the sun, the rhythm of your footsteps, and the gentle hum of the countryside.

As much as I love the rush of city life and the thrill of racing through different parts of Europe, this trip reminded me of something important: sometimes you need to slow down and let the journey matter just as much as the destination.

A x