Day 22: To the Wall thank you, Hadrian, there's a good chap.

At 10.45 am today (7.45pm EST) as we headed north in search of Hadrian's wall, we briefly raised a middle finger to Sweaty Joe, as we imagined him blustering about at the despatch box, blue tie askew, delivering the federal Budget - still blaming Labor, still propping up the fossil fuel industries at the expense of clean energy, neatly side-stepping issues like superannuation tax breaks for the wealthy and tax avoidance by multi-nationals....would love to be proved wrong but I doubt it.  Will peruse the Guardian's detailed analysis shortly before continuing my biting commentary.  (Just joshin - I'm done!)

Moving on -  this morning, still slightly hypothermic from our luke-warm showers, we braced ourselves for our mission today -  a close-range inspection of the best bits of Hadrian's Wall.  We drove for well over an hour, mostly on the M6, through the glorious Cumbria landscape - the pastures are so impossibly green.  Ancient stone fences dividing paddocks and equally ancient breeds of hardy, wool-shedding sheep and thousands of tiny lambs in all colours - black, brown, grey, beige, spotted.  The huge and seemingly barren Cumbrian hills provide such a starkly beautiful backdrop to all this pastoral glory that it's quite humbling - I feel honoured to have seen it.  And not forgetting for a moment that this is the view from the motorway!  A tad more splendid than the Canberra-Sydney run on the Hume Highway, but I guess we do have our moments elsewhere.

Just after Carlisle we started seeing signage to Hadrian's Wall. Geoff was of the view that we should take such signage with a grain of salt. This worried me, but

                              

I had made two false assumptions: (1) that Hadrian's Wall remains largely intact across the country and (2) that it forms the border with Scotland. I now know that I am a dunce and an idiot, and nothing could be further from the truth. (Geoff, however, went to Opportunity Class whereas I did not.)  This pic on the right was taken en route down a path to Poltross Burn, a milecastle along Hadrian's wall. We had driven up hill and down dale, pathetically grateful for any signage at all, and it was not the bit we were looking for,  but once you find any HW signage and a parking spot in this neck of the woods, it's best to take it and go with the flow. So we did, discovering, during our brisk ramble of about 500 metres, that this was one of over 70 milecastles along the entire wall - they are roughly a mile and a half apart and a number of Roman army soldiers were stationed at each to patrol the countryside. These

Poltross Burn Milecastle

days, those milecastles that survive are mostly on privately owned farms. 

Next, Geoff was determined to find a larger chunk of the wall and a large Roman fortress called BirdOswald.  Again the signposting was really bad, but after we had traversed the same lanes several times with eyes peeled, we finally struck paydirt.  I suspect there are other travellers, not as intrepid as Geoff, who are still meandering between Cumbria and Northumberland, looking for something (anything!) that might resemble a bit of Roman wall.                                                                                  


Before today, I had only ever seen Hadrian's Wall pics that look like this:   >>>>

You'd swear it went on forever.  Alas, it doesn't, and of course not, it's almost 2000 years old! But it is quite wonderful.  This pic, taken just outside Birdoswald Fort, would have been about 4 kms across the paddocks from Poltross Burn Milecastle, that we visited first.

                      

 

Inside the fort at Birdoswald. You will of course recognise the buttressed south wall of the north granary building. I certainly did.

 

 

 

Rictus grin from me at the main south gate of the fort. I have not been that cold since I spent a very unpleasant 45 minutes on Appleby train station earlier this week.                              

                                   
Handing over to Snorkypants now, for more pics of our day at the wall (yawn, but there is a reason!) and an explanation as to why, if we were so damn close, we didn't make it to Scotland. All with the added bonus of sparkling commentary. Hopefully his spacing will be better than mine too.  I have seemingly lost the ability to wrap text.     

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Yet again the road signage let us down.  We assumed that it would be easier to follow for what we think is such a major attraction.  I'm sure it's better for more lucrative ventures, like Disneyland in Cumbria (well it would be if there was one).  Anyway, persistence paid off.  On arrival, to say that we faced a howling gale would be an understatement.  You won't see anyone else in our photos, as for most of the time we were the only ones actually outside in the grounds of the fort.

There are in fact sheep in the distant background.  I thought I had a better pic of the sheep, but when viewed, it looks like the photographer was in the process of crashing to the ground when the shutter was clicked, having been blown over by a force 10 gale.  Which is exactly what happened.  But somehow the weather seemed appropriate, and if that kept the hordes of tourists away, so much the better.  By the way, Game of Thrones fans would know that Hadrian's wall is the inspiration for the great wall that separates Westeros (the Romans) from the Wildings (the barbarians).  While the 21st century Hadrian's wall is a little less impressive, you have to make allowances for 2000 years of exposure to the elements.  Not to mention pieces of it being removed over the centuries for use in farmhouse foundations and the like.

Since this was our only attraction for the day, please forgive us one more photo.

A lengthy section of the wall featuring typical vegetation of the area.  'The area' by the way may be either Cumbria or Northumberland.  In our efforts to find it we crossed the county border several times.

The reason we didn't make it to Scotland, or indeed any further today, was an unfortunate failure of technology, namely the exhaustion of the capacity of the camera's memory card.  Theodore Roosevelt said 'speak softly and carry a big stick'.  With apologies to him, today's lesson is 'think laterally and carry a spare memory card'.  What to do when in the wilds of the English - Scottish border and faced with the need to purchase a memory card?  What would the Romans have done?  The helpful woman in the Birdoswald ticket office said we'd get one in Brampton, about 10 miles distant.  We can now report that this is not so.  Brampton turns out to be a depressing village of no discernible merit, where you could probably get your last drink if you were that desperate, but certainly not a camera memory card.

After due consideration, we decided to head for home, in the hope of getting one in the thriving metropolis of Kendal (just off the M6, as most of you will know).  Following Hortense's flash of inspiration to google 'camera shops Kendal', we established a plan of attack, which not only identified a likely shop, but also automated directions via the phone.  So successful that we're considering trading in the satnav on the product that directs you to camera shops in Kendal.

To cut a long story short, we're heading north again tomorrow, complete with newly installed memory card, to seek out the fabled border crossing to the mythical kingdom of Scotland.

Och mon!  Good noight! xxx