Back at the start of July we took a wee trip down to northern England to visit Hadrian's Wall. The weather wasn't great but we decided it would still be OK to visit on a rainy day, besides, we'd already spent quite a bit of time cooped up in Edinburgh and had to get out.
Armed with a book of British walks kindly given to me as a leaving gift by my colleagues at PDP, we set off for a couple of day's walking along the wall. It turns out that a little black and white map in a book is no substitute for a proper Ordnance Survey map so we had a few navigational issues. However, once we were on the wall it was easy enough to follow the track (most of the time).
Following the wall isn't as easy as it sounds. The wall was built by the emperor Hadrian nearly 2000 years ago to keep the Scots out. It must have been quite a formiddable sight and by all accounts seemed to work rather well. But time (and local farmers in need of stone) have taken their toll on the wall and in some places there is little trace of it, although you can often see the embankment/moat system called the Vallum.
The section we walked along was the best-preserved and also included a couple of Roman forts and the Roman Army Museum. I found it really interesting - these sites had the oldest ruins I'd ever been to (older than the temples of Angkor Wat) and it was fascinating learning more about how the Romans worked and lived, particularly as the ruins were intact enough that you could see what they were talking about. As an engineer, I found aspects of how they constructed the wall and their buildings (such as drainage and sanitation systems, and the raised floors of the granaries) particularly interesting. Sylvia had been before when she was fourteen but she indulged my geekiness with good humour considering the rain ;-)
After the initial construction of the wall by the three legions stationed in Britain at that time, it was largely garrisoned by units of auxillaries - troops recruited locally, or from as far away as Syria. As you can see in the photo, these forces still patrol the wall.
