Hadrians Wall – A Traveling Fool

I love history anyway, so I can easily get excited over seeing someplace like Hadrian’s Wall or Egyptian pyramids and temples or battlefields like Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Yorktown, Culloden, the D-Day landing beaches, etc. Smaller historical events are also intriguing to me.

Whether you are fascinated by history or not, knowing just a little bit about a place can make it much more interesting, such as what is the significance of an old cemetery? Who is buried there?

In St Augustine, Florida, I was fascinated by the fort. It had been built by the Spanish prior to the English settlements at either Jamestown or Roanoke, Virginia or Plymouth, Massachusetts.

In Israel, Masada would have just been several piles of rocks up on a high, hot plateau without knowledge of its history. For those who hadn’t read up on it before the trip, there was a short film down at the base that everyone watched before taking the cable car up to see it.

At Thermopylae in Greece, without knowledge of what had taken place there a couple thousand years ago, just looking at a monument to Leonides and the 300 Spartans who fought and died there wouldn’t have been all that fascinating. Since I knew the story, I could use my imagination. And a good imagination was necessary. The topography has changed quite a bit since 480 BC.

On this trip, my knowledge of Joan of Arc came in handy while in Rouen. I knew that the museum dedicated to her was in the very building where her trial had taken place. I also knew about all of the other locations associated with her.

In Avignon, I was aware of the history of the town, the Pont de Avignon, and the Palais des Papes. Despite it being a very hot day, my back hurting, and lots of stairs to climb, I was very interested in seeing it all.

Sometimes when visiting a place where you already know the history, you can find that seeing the place itself can make your understanding of it much clearer. It was one thing to read about traboules (the secret passages that had been used by the French Resistance to escape detection), but quite another to actually walk through a few of them. They had been built in the old, Renaissance portion of Lyon back when that part of the city was new. People who lived there knew about them. But people who didn’t live there were at a loss. To this day, only a handful of them are open to the public.

Although most people are well aware of who Napoleon was and his role in history, I always find it to be fun to see personal objects used by such iconic public figures. In Napoleon’s case, it was his hat on display in the library of Malmaison – the home he shared with Josephine. It made him seem more human. Like when I saw one of Queen Victoria’s gowns and Admiral Horatio Nelson’s uniform.

A full day exploring various sections of the Roman wall built across Britain, near present day Scotland, in 122 AD to keep those wild tribes north of the wall north of the wall. As a descendant of more than one of those wild tribes, I have to say that I’m rather proud of them putting the “fear of God” into those Roman Legions. The Romans were used to just going all over Europe and the Middle East conquering everybody.

This was another Rabbie’s day trip, leaving from across the street. This time we had a much smaller group. Me and two young guys in their twenties who were from the Dominican Republic and were re-enactors of the Roman Ninth Legion (officially Legio IX Hispana). They had their banner with them and posed for photos at the wall, some of which I took for them. The Ninth Legion is the one that was stationed in York and supposedly marched up to Caledonia and disappeared. This was prior to the wall being built and has been considered to be one of the reasons why Hadrian ordered its building.

They didn’t speak much English so most of the conversation was between the Tour Guide and me. It seemed they understood more English than they could speak although the Tour Guide would write down the times they needed to be back to our chariot (the tour coach). They were always there on time.

After a bathroom break at Jedburgh, our next stop was Carter Bar – one of the border crossings between Scotland and England. It was also the site of the last battle between England and Scotland in the 1500s (Culloden technically wasn’t between England and Scotland, but between British Royal forces and Bonnie Prince Charlie and his forces).

Once we crossed the border, we drove along Dere Street, which was built by the Romans, to our first stop along the wall. This was Housesteads Fort again. But we were only stopping briefly. This was just to give us a taste. We were heading for Steel Rigg.

Along the way, between Housesteads and Steel Rigg, was Sycamore Gap. This is on a part of the wall which runs along the edge of a cliff and has some rather dramatic dips formed by retreating glaciers. In the middle of one of the sharpest dips is an enormous sycamore tree. The tree is a few hundred years old and was used in a pivotal scene near the beginning of the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Steel Rigg got its name from the 17^th century farm that used to be there. It was a cool site with lots of dips and twists in the ground upon which it runs. The wall itself was low and grass covered on top, but it ran on for a ways. It briefly snowed while we were there. The ground got a “wee bit slippy” but we managed to stay on our feet while getting photos and heading back to the van.

Our next stop was Vindolanda. The name comes from a post that was excavated there and was the actual name of the Roman garrison, which predated Hadrian’s Wall and had a village just outside of it. The fort was built 85 AD (the wall 122 AD) and ended up just south of the wall.

Vindolanda has been an active archaeological site since the early 1800s. It has a very interesting museum containing clothing, shoes, pottery, tools, equipment, weapons, and even some skeletons of both dogs and horses. All of these artifacts would have been from between 85 AD and 370 AD. It was amazing to me how well things had been preserved.

The most important artifacts found there have been the Vindolanda Tablets which are handwritten wooden leaf tablets. These were the oldest surviving handwritten documents (in ink) in Britain at the time they were discovered. More recently older documents were found in London. They included letters, various lists (of supplies, for example), military orders, a request for “more beer” –- quite a variety.

I had lunch at a café next to the museum and then went exploring outside. Temples (one was a combined Roman/Celtic temple), bathhouses, barracks, officer’s quarters, storage buildings, domestic homes, and drainage ditches were among the excavations with more buildings being discovered all the time.

In addition, they had replicas of what the origin wooden portions of the wall would have looked like as well as the stone walls. People could enter the replicas and walk along at the height (16 feet) and width (six feet) that the real walls would have been when the Romans were manning them. I climbed up on both the wooden and stone replicas to see what they would have been like.

Originally called Banna (horn) by the Celts, Birdoswald (named for the farm it is on) has a Roman fort, a milecastle (a small fort), a turret, and one of the longest stretches of a pretty solid wall from six to eight feet in height. The site also has the remains of a Dark Ages Hall and a Medieval Tower House as well as the 16^th century farmhouse.

When the Romans arrived, the site was a forested bog. They needed to clear and drain it before they could build. It seems that the main Roman occupants of this fort were Dacians, from what eventually became present day Romania. They know this because of Dacian inscriptions found in the fort and on the wall.

After the Romans left, parts of the fort were still in use. This is also when the Dark Ages Hall was built. Remains from the Anglo-Saxon period have been found at Birdoswald as well as the Middle Ages. The main west gate of the fort was apparently still in use at that time. A small Medieval Tower house was built next to it. By the 16^th century, the west gate had collapsed and the current farmhouse was built. The tower of the farmhouse was added in the 18^th century.

Here was where we had the opportunity to walk on the actual wall. To do so would involve some climbing. This would have been much easier back when I was in my twenties. By 2016 I was a long way from my twenties, but I was determined to walk on the wall. Using my hands as well as my feet, I climbed to a height of about six feet (I judged the height by the distance over my 5’3” head the wall appeared to be at that point).

Once on top of the wall, I walked along it rather gingerly. It was only about three feet wide at this point, rather rough, and missing some stones here and there. Plus, my spring allergies had recently shown me a new symptom –- a slight dizziness. Said dizziness was more pronounced up there on top of the wall. So determined as I was to be up and walk along it, I was being careful not to fall off.

Imagine my feelings as I saw a child, about three feet in height, running along the top of the wall towards me. His parents were down on the ground and didn’t seem to be concerned about his safety any more than mine. They didn’t tell him to stop running or to be careful about me, although they were looking up and could see us both. I froze totally until he passed me. Then I continued on for a while, taking the photo of my foot on the wall that I use here in my blog, before going back down.

Back on terra firma, I took the photo showing some other people on top of the wall coming from the opposite direction. The wall was wider there. The photo of my foot doesn’t give much of an indication of how high up I was, but the photo of the longer course of the wall gives a pretty good idea of both the height and the roughness of the top of the wall. You can probably guess that I was pretty excited about having been able to get up there and walk along for a bit.

We were not too far from Carlisle and from the west coast of England. When our visit at Birdoswald was over, we continued along the wall until reaching Lanercost Priory. The priory was founded in roughly 1169 and used several stones from Hadrian’s Wall. King Edward I of England stayed a few times at the priory and was initially buried there until he was moved to Westminster Abbey.

From Lanercost, we pulled northwards to re-enter Scotland. Our last pit stop was in the town of Moffet. Just outside of town is an area called The Devil’s Beef Tub. This was where four mountains sit very close together to form a very deep and dark ravine. Cattle thieves once used this area to hide themselves and their stolen cattle. Later (in 1935) a Moffat doctor used this location to hide the bodies of his murder victims, including his own family. The road we were on had a sharp drop down into the ravine next to it which provided a pretty dramatic viewpoint.

Back in Edinburgh, I purchased some food at Sainsbury’s for dinner in my room. That night, BBC2 had a three hour “Shakespeare Live” telecast from Stratford-Upon-Avon which was being hosted by David Tennant and Catherine Tate. I settled in for the night with my dinner and thoroughly enjoyed the show. You can probably pick out Benedict Cumberbatch, Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, and Judy Dench in the cast photo.

Next time – the train to London and a boat trip to Greenwich.