purplecat

The village of Wroxeter occupies one corner of the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum. English Heritage has preserved an excavation of the substantial baths, next to a modern recreation of a Roman town house. Most of the baths, as is common with Roman remains, had clearly been covered by the landscape but "The Old Work" must have stood visible in arable land and one can't help feeling that the nearby residents of Shrewsbury missed a trick when they didn't loot it for building material.

( Pictures under the Cut )

Chesters is probably the most impressive of the Hadrian's Wall forts simply because it has walls that are in many places a good deal higher than the foot or so you see elsewhere.



A store room.






The bath house complex by the river is particularly impressive.


I think this is the hot steam room - presumably a bit like a sauna.


These were the lockers where you put your clothes before entering the complex.

Housteads main claim to fame as a wall fort is the excellent preservation of its latrines. However, in celebration of 1900 years of Hadrian's Wall it had acquired a controversial art installation in the form of a colourful gatehouse decorated with comments from workshop sessions on the Wall. B. and I quite liked it but could see that if this was your only visit to Housteads you might not have wanted the whole thing dominated by a mock gatehouse.






This is the view from up within the gate house.


The latrines.

Birdoswald was our first fort on the walk. We'd skipped viewing it last time because we reached it at the absolute low point in our walk, where it looked like B's knees were going to give out, I had terrible blisters and when we stopped in the tea room they gave us squirty cream with our scones and jam.

The tea room and visitor centre had been renovated in the intervening years (though we didn't risk the scones). There was a nice short film about Hadrian's wall as well as Lego models of turrets, milecastles, curtain wall and a Roman Bridge together with (albeit sketchy) instructions. I've photographed these, though I haven't yet built Hadrian's wall myself.



To be honest, the forts later in the walk have more to see, but we could still follow the outline of the fort's walls.


What Birdoswald does have is a 18th/19th century farmhouse (complete with mock tower) in the middle of it. I thought it was a youth hostel and had looking into booking us a night there, but it turned out to be more a holiday house kind of thing - easy enough to book if there are 10 of you wanting to stay for a week - less attractive if it is two of you wanting to stay for the night.


I think this was supposed to be some kind of Roman instrument. It was located at the far entrance of the fort.

Having spent a week in Orkney, B and I then spent a week walking Hadrian's Wall in the opposite direction to the one we took in 2017, taking an extra day and skipping the Newcastle suburbs. Day 1 we walked from Boness on Solway to Carlisle. Boness had struck us as rather run down when we visited in 2017, but this time it felt more like a village in the process of gentrification - it had acquired an extra restaurant and cafe, and a smattering of smart cars. It was the tail end of a heat wave and while neither of us dehydrated we both drank a lot of water once we got to our hotel in Carlisle. The walk itself was rather dull. In 2017 the Solway Firth came at the end of a long day of walking and had a certain grandeur under overcast skies. At the start of a walk in the blazing sunshine the stretch of the walk alongside it seemed shorter and less significant. This part of the walk is mostly fields and villages - charming in its way but 17 miles of it was plenty. At Carlisle we got to walk along the river which we'd been unable to do in 2017 because it was under repair following floods.



Anyway, here is B. at the very start of the walk.


Day 2 was much the same. We were walking a shorter distance so spent the morning sight-seeing in Carlisle (something we had skipped previously since we were walking 24 miles in one day and had no time) and then walked to Walton-on-the-Wall - setting quite a fast pace since rain was forecast late afternoon (though in the event it didn't arrive until into the night). The landscape was much the same - fields and villages and we somehow missed our first section of wall. At Walton we stayed in a bunkhouse with a donkey.

I'm so behind on posting summer holiday pictures. However I assume no one minds much...

Anyway no Scottish holiday would be complete without a visit to a distillery. We went for a tour and tasting of Highland Park, though we had rather more drivers and teenagers in the party than drinkers and ended up taking away a lot of small tasting bottles with us.



This is the malt floor where the barley is spread out and turned by hand for malting. No barley there when we went to see and it wasn't entirely clear to me how much of the barley that goes into Highland Park was actually hand turned on this malt floor.

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Apparently the Porteus company, makers of this Malt Mill have long been out of business having unfortunately made their products so well that they rarely break down. As far as I can gather you are now in trouble if you are a distillery where the malt mill has stopped working, since no one makes them any more.


And here is some actual whiskey, stored in a locked customs warehouse but with a window where we could look in to see it.


I found I rather liked Highland Park. Not as peaty as the whiskey's I normally drink but it slips down easier as a result.

Our next stop on the road trip was Unstan Chambered Cairn. There was another low entrance so Ragnor opted to remain outside. However, unlike Maeshowe, there was no guide, no ban on photographs and no railings to stop you touching the archeology. It might be a minor tomb in Orkney terms, but was nevertheless pretty impressive inside with the partitioned main chamber and a smaller chamber to one side. The roof had been replaced, but at least that let in plenty of light.

( More under the cut )