Second Day at Holmeshead

Compiled by both Lydia and Amos

Today, we slept in. A little. We slept in in that we didn’t have breakfast until 8:30. We chatted with another, different, woman traveling alone. Apparently, she was going to a clan reunion, and was going to stop at Vinolanda on the way. As it happens, that was our stop of the day, so we remarked maybe we would see her there and got on our merry way.
Vinolanda is the remains of an ancient roman fort from the early AD’s. And they mean early. The earliest fort was built sometime around 85 AD, they think. And I mean, they think. I am rather skeptical of these people. Not in their artifacts, which are in fact amazing, but in their buildings. Because yes, they found some walls and that’s wonderful, but we could watch a man slapping walls together with cement and the various stones they’d pulled up from the area. How on earth do they even know where these buildings were, what they were for? I mean, sure they could figure it out to some extant but most of the walls seemed to be put together in the last few years. They could have put those walls anywhere, and we wouldn’t have known the difference. Ahh well, the museum was wonderful and it was a nice walk on a field. We had lunch in the associated café, because everything seems to have an associated café, and got back in the car for a drive over to an accessible part of Hadrian’s Wall. The parking lot was a pay-and-park, but we didn’t have the exact three pounds change, and it wouldn’t take our credit card, but someone rushed up and gave us their still good ticket. The Dutchman behind us didn’t have three pounds either, so we gave him our only coin and he managed to get one from a passing group.
Steel Rigg is one of the places you can get to Hadrian’s Wall from. It’s quite a nice wall. Square bricks. Thick. There’s grasses growing on top, and I was actually able to get up on top of the wall and walk directly upon it. It has, apparently, sunken down into the ground over the years, partly because of rabbits burrowing beneath it and partly because things are a little boggy. The walk was pretty easy at first and then, after a low place, you climb straight up a ridge cliff with nicely placed steps, but it was good to have a stick. This was clearly more than Granny could do so we found a place out of the wind, next to the wall, put the poncho down for a nice dry place to sit and let her rest there. I suggested that she could make a drawing and then Marci, Lydia and I went on up to the top and walked along the ridge. The edge of the ridge, a really impenetrable ridge, and it is unlikely the Scotts could have climbed it, but there was a wall anyways. When Hadrian says he wants a wall he gets one; even if it is completely unnecessary It’s had to be put back together, after such long periods of inattention, and in any case most of the stones seem to have either sunk or been stolen for buildings. In fact, our b&b was made from stones filched from the nearby castle that had filched them from the wall. The area is where we were hiking was used in the Kevin Costner film of Robin Hood, although it was not near the original Robin Hood area.
After this we bought a picnic supper and went to the B&B and ate it, played board games such as Kerpunk and a few more bizarre, if tedious, games, then off to bed.