St Oswald's Way

St Oswald's Way is a 97 mile walking route that starts (in the direction we walked it) at Heavenfield on the Hadrian's Wall Path, then loops around to the north of Newcastle upon Tyne, by way of Rothbury and Warkworth, before following the coast north and crossing the causeway to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

Oswald was King of Northumbria, who came to the throne after defeating Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd in the Battle of Heavenfield in around 634, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira together under a single ruler, and promoted the spread of Christianity in Northumbria. However he was a warrior king and he was killed by the Mercians at the Battle of Maserfield in 642, at a place generally identified with Oswestry. The name Oswestry comes from "Oswald's Tree": following Oswald's death his body was dismembered and according to legend one of his arms was carried to an ash tree by a raven, and miracles were subsequently attributed to the tree.

St Oswald's Way claims to link places associated with St Oswald. In fact I have only been able to identify three such places which the route visits: Heavenfield, Lindisfarne and Bamburgh, though there may be more. To be honest it doesn't matter to us if the link with St Oswald is tenuous; we walked St Oswald's Way because we wanted to follow the trail, not as a pilgrimage.

Heavenfield is the site of the Battle of Heavenfield in which, it appears, Oswald's victory was unexpected. Stories abound to the effect that the night before the battle, Oswald had a vision of St Columba, in which the saint foretold that Oswald would be victorious and that before the battle Oswald lifted high a simple wooden cross and prayed. The site is now marked by a wooden cross; the current St Oswald's Church on the site was only built in 1817, though there were earlier buildings here from medieval and possibly Saxon times. We visited St Oswald's Church when walking the Hadrian's Wall Path in June 2016 and it was interesting mostly for a display of information about Oswald.

Oswald had been converted to Christianity, possibly by the monks on Iona, and when he became king he turned to Iona to ask for a missionary to convert his people; the monks of Iona sent Aidan. Oswald gave him free choice of land on which to found his monastery and Aidan chose Lindisfarne. Oswald's head is apparently interred in Durham Cathedral along with the bones of St Cuthbert, but it should be noted that Oswald and Cuthbert were not associated during Oswald's lifetime; Cuthbert became Abbott of Lindisfarne more than 40 years after Oswald's death.

Lindisfarne was not far from King Oswald's main "palace" at Bamburgh, and Oswald and Aidan became friends. The story goes that Oswald and Aidan were feasting together, and a silver dish of food had been set before them. Just as they were saying their prayers of blessing, a servant came into the Hall to tell the King that a great crowd of hungry folk were sitting outside the palace begging alms. The king immediately ordered his food to be taken out to them and the silver platter to be broken up and shared among them. Aidan, impressed by the generosity of the King, raised Oswald’s right hand and prayed, “May this hand never wither with age”. Apparently the hand never withered, and this hand is now in a silver casket in Bamburgh Church.

St Oswald's Way was created in 2006, so it is an appropriate walk for us to have completed in 2016, the 10th anniversary year of JordanWalks too. It was a delightful walk, crossing beautiful Northumbrian countryside and following one of our much-loved sections of coast. We have lived in Newcastle and have had many holidays in Northumberland, so we had previously visited many of the places that the path passes before. I particularly remember walks through the Simonside Hills with colleagues from work, visiting Craster and Bamburgh with Richard and my parents around 1980, discovering Warkworth Castle when the children were small, and returning to Craster, with a visit to Lindisfarne, to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday and my daughter's 10th birthday in 1998. More recently, we had a lovely break higher up the Coquet Valley in 2014, whilst the final section of the route, including the crossing to Lindisfarne, is coincident with St Cuthbert's Way, which we walked in 2010. However there were sections of the path that were new to us, so the whole thing was a delightful combination of new discovery and revisiting favourite haunts.

St Oswald's Way is not separately signposted in the section that is coincident with the Hadrian's Wall Path, but beyond that it is remarkably well signposted, with many signs that looked new in 2016. There are two variants of a sign on a white background, one with a flying bird and one with a (less pretty but more useful) directional arrow. Then, in the coastal section which is shared with the Northumberland Coastal Path, an attractive sign on a blue background appears. The signposting let us down just twice, both in the section between Rothbury and Guyzance - I'm not sure whether we missed signs or whether they weren't there. As usual we carried a full complement of OS 1: 25000 (Explorer and Outdoor Leisure) maps - and in this case it is rather a lot: in order we used sheets OL43, 316, OL43 again, OL42, 325, 332, 340 and 346. It was maps that alerted us when we had wandered from the trail, though on both occasions when we'd wandered, it was helpful locals who actually put us right. The maps were also useful to find our accommodation, especially when it was some distance from the trail, and they gave us an oversight of the landscape through which we were passing; I wouldn't be without them.

There are at least two websites dedicated to St Oswald's Way, with urls that are so similar that you would be forgiven for thinking they are the same site, but they aren't: look at http://www.stoswaldsway.co.uk/ (good for history) and http://www.stoswaldsway.com/ (good for changes to the route and for accommodation). There is a newly published (July 2016) Cicerone guide to St Oswald's Way and St Cuthbert's Way by Rudolf Abraham, but we don't have a copy.