Day 11. Hadrians Wall/ Durham – Sep 19th, 2013

The wake up phone call did not happen at 07:00, but my trusty alarm clock did the trick. The bag went out at 07:30 and I went down to breakfast. I had very little to eat as we had the pub lunch coming up.

Just as we were leaving the hotel, I noticed an old photo in the back of the lobby. On November 25th, 1911 the “Waterbird” lifted off Lake Windermere to make the first hydro-aeroplane flight in the British Empire.

http://www.waterbirdproject.com

Of course Alexander Graham Bell flew his Silver Dart off the frozen surface of Baddeck Bay in January 1909. So, Canada did the first frozen “water” flight.

At 09:00 Colin piloted the coach outbound with a weather forecast of overcast, some rain with occasional sunny intervals. The actual was far more rain than anything else.

As we drove through the village of Windermere, there was an exhibition that explores the connection between the Lake District and the arrival of 300 Jewish child concentration camp survivors who arrived in the area in 1945.

We drove north to pick our guide at the railway station at Penrith. A mid-morning treat was a piece of Kendal mint sugar cake that Captain Scott took to Antarctica.

We then went through some name curiosities. The Cotswolds, lying between Oxford and Stratford, take their meaning from Cots (sheep) and Wolds (hills). In Sussex the hills are called Downs, in Kent they are the Weald, in the North they are called Dales and in the Lake District the Fells.

We skirted Carlisle, which changed nine times between Scotland and England.

Richard the Third, late of the car park, was the Keeper of the Western Marches. His reburial site is being debated, possibly in Leicester Cathedral.

Then we started peeling the Roman onion. By the time of the Roman reconnaissance, between 55 and 54 BC by Julius Caesar, the indigenous Celts had a viable culture and were good metal workers with a lot of mineral wealth. In 43 AD Emperor Claudius landed in southern England at the head of 40,000 legionnaires. The Celtic tribes were not united and fell to the Roman advance into Britannia. Only Queen Bodicea offered significance resistance. Between AD 61 and AD 63 Boadicea led her Iceni people in a war against the Romans.

The Romans drove north getting to York by 71 AD and into Cumbria. Although they went further north, by the early 100s Emperor Hadrian had decided to pull back and create a military zone to mark the northern limit of the Roman Empire. Hence, Hadrian’s Wall.

The wall was built to CONTROL rather than DEFEND. The line chosen was the shortest route from the Solway to the Tyne, a distance of 80 Roman miles or about 73 statute miles. The system had three basic components, a deep twenty foot ditch on the northern side, the wall and a warning ditch, the Vallum, to the south. The aim was to warn people that they were in a military control zone and that their passage would be controlled by the Romans.

The wall was about 4.5 meters high, eight feet wide and made of cut stone. The legionnaires did the construction, not slave labourers, but may have enlisted the aid of locals to transport materials. There were fifteen forts, one every five miles, that could contain about 800 soldiers. At every mile there was a gateway straddling the wall and between each of these two watch towers one third of a mile apart, having line of sight observation.

The wall was built in only six years, between 122 and 128 AD.

The wall was abandoned about 390 AD. But, there is now a National Hiking Trail that goes the entire original route. We watched several bedraggled groups of hikers.

We arrived at the Birdoswald Fort at 11:07 in the pouring rain. We watched an audio visual presentation describing this particular portion of the wall. It said about 27 million cubic yards of cut stone were used in the construction.

After the Romans withdrew, various tribes moved in, but there was no discipline and it was a dangerous time. The next disciplined group to arrive was the Normans from 1066 onwards. They quickly recognized the value of the cut stone in the wall and used it to construct their castles and cathedrals.

Over the ensuing centuries any number of construction projects used the stone. The last might have been an eighteen century military road constructed in the area to speed east-west military movement to counter Scottish incursions.

We drove off at 12:15 and drove along surviving sections of Hadrian’s Wall.

At 14:00, after a circuitous route through narrow winding roads, we pulled into ‘The Travellers Rest’ near Slaley, Northumberland for a pub lunch of soup, pie and a beer. The soup was delicious, the bitter beer right on the money and the beef pie absolutely delicious but huge.

We left the country pub at 15:05 and wound our way through some very beautiful landscapes. We were into County Durham and the Durham Dales. In the past the area had been famous for both lead and coal mining. There is a huge coal field under Durham, but coal mining has contracted since the 1980s.

As we pulled into Durham, I found out that if a place has a cathedral it is designated a city. In Durham, the Normans started the cathedral in 1093, only 27 years after the Conquest.

The whole day could have been quite lovely, but once again the weather ruined the day.

By 16:00 we arrived at the Ramside Hotel in Carville, Durham County. I managed to get in a short walk on the grounds before it started spitting again.

Dinner was at 19:00, but I was really not that hungry after the huge lunch. Fortunately, it was a carvery and a small slice of turkey and veggjes sufficed. I skipped dessert.

I had an early night as we have a 06:30 wake up.