Birdsong's Trip to the UK

Old Roman Road in Vindolanda

Friday, Oct. 21 - Haltwhistle, Hadrian's Wall

Raining. We made arrangements to go to Hadrian's Wall. There are few buses this late in the year, so we booked a taxi to take us to Vindolanda (10 minutes away). It was not near the wall, but had a good museum, Reeves guide said.

We spent nearly 2 hours in the Vindolanda museum - a record for us, and it was a small museum! There were thousands and thousands of Roman artifacts that had been beautifully preserved in oxygen-free mud.

As the Roman built stone buildings to replace wooden ones, they put down cement floors sealing in the mud-which formerly was just outside the wood buildings where people had thrown their trash.

Items that would not usually be preserved, were: wooden writing tablets, cloth, leather shoes (thousands!) They had some of the best preserved Roman letters, and the only one from a Roman woman: an invitation to another woman to attend her birthday party, using very polite language.

In another letter, a soldier complains to his brother, "You haven't written." A captain says his troops are out of beer. Most letters were written by scribes, and their handwriting is recognizable to the archivists.

Each Hadrian's wall fort had 300-500 troops, plus families, merchants, and slaves. The wall was begun in 63 AD, and completed in 122 AD. The Romans left the country due to the collapse of the Roman Empire by the early 5th century.

Some say the wall was a barrier to the warlike early Scots, and others say it was simply something to keep the soldiers from being idle. The Celtic warriors to the north were never defeated by the Romans.

Our taxi came back to take us to Housesteads. It was pouring rain, harder than we had ever seen, and windy. We had to walk nearly a mile up hills to Hadrian's wall, through sheep pastures with gates.

There was hardly anyone there but us. We whipped through the tiny museum, walked up to the wall, took a couple of photos, and sloshed back down hills to get DRY. Took the bus back to town.

In the afternoon, we tried to get a B&B or anything in York. NO rooms! It was "midterm" and kids were out of school, so families and school groups were there.

The woman at the Tourism Office suggested we go to Durham (on the railway to York) which we did. Booked the only thing we could get there, Ramside Inn. Thank goodness we did not just go on to York without a room reservation!

We learned a lesson: Make sure you make a B&B reservation for weekends, and avoid "midterm!"

Saturday, Oct. 22 - Durham, Northern England

The train from Haltwhistle to Newcastle was FULL of school kids! We got seats, but some did not.

At Durham, we got a "private eye" taxi - no markings to show it was a taxi, and the station guy winked when he ushered us in. (Were we swindled?) The "taxi" took us to our Ramside Hall Hotel and Golf Resort, an ornate but shoddy blue-collar-looking place.

The taxi driver said the food was good there, and he and his wife went often. There were about five wedding parties. It was raining lightly all day, and we decided we would just stay in the hotel - no sight seeing.

The taxi driver said the only things to see were the cathedral and castle - and we saw them from the taxi. Naps, washed undies and nearly finished How the Scots Invented The World.

Larry looked at the dinner menu and wanted to eat in the formal dining room rather than the Grill where we had lunch. It looked quite pricey, but we went to the formal dining room and each had rack of lamb and asparagus, of course wine and we shared a dessert. VERY good, and worth the price.

When they brought the check, the only charge was for the wine. Dinner was included in our room rate! We almost ate in the Grill, which was not included in the room. They failed to tell us this at check in. Since breakfast was also included, our room rate of £123 didn't seem so bad.

Larry at Hadrian's Wall