A good day today, and I’m only a LITTLE bit secretly relieved that I went with David on the bus instead of going the long way. Our 8 minute bus trip from Brocolitia to Housesteads took the rest of the crew a solid 3 hours.
One of the cool things about this walk is that we’re walking through active pastures. Some of the roman sites still have sheep grazing there as well. I’ve snagged a bit of roving from a couple sites as a wooly souvenir. Walking by one stretch of Hadrian’s wall today we were just a few feet from cows. I guess the conservators feel that after 1800 years a few more sheep aren’t going to hurt anything.
It’s also very cool that not only can you still see the wall, but in many places you can still see the fighting ditch or the vallum. Basically ditches dug 1800 years ago . . . A walking tour of Britain also seems to fit the SCALE of the country – everything is, for the most part, smaller than we’d see in the U.S. And walking from village to village somehow seems to reinforce how this is the right size for Britian – the villages are in walking distance.
David and I hung out at Housesteads (mind the UP hill walk from the car park if you go by bus or car) and admired the latrines and gates. One of the nearby gates in the wall, the Knag Burn gate, is still the site of a working gate. We used our binoculars to watch for the rest of the party and spotted them coming over the Sewingshields crag – very dramatic. About a half hour later they were at the fort and willing to give it a by so we could hit the road for the B&B. I was very glad we did that part of the walk since the first part of the walk we actually walked ON the wall. We were quite high up a cliff and looking down to the field below we saw three hares – that’s how big they are that you can see them clearly from the top of a cliff! Rabbits of Unusual Size indeed.
Also saw the spectacular Crag Lough (the way Loch is spelled around here). We were on a tear though so don’t know if Jim took a picture.
This post was written by
Nadya – who has written 117 posts on UniBrain Trust.
Nadya is the resident food giver and trip planner. She likes to make things, and occasionally finishes them. Look! Shiny thing! You can often find her fixing JIm's spelling errors.