Saturday, October 17th--Hadrian's Wall

On Saturday we took a train from Edinburgh to Carlisle. Carlisle is a city on the west coast of Britain about 100 miles southwest of Edinburgh. It is located just inside the English border.  Our train stopped in Lockerbie Scotland, right before it took us into England.  At the railway station, we rented a car, a Mitsubishi and began our trek just south of the border! 

After settling into our hotel, we drove east.  At this point, England is at its narrowest, only about 60-70 miles wide.  On the west coast is Carlisle.  On the east is Newcastle-on-Tyne. 

In 122 AD Hadrian, the Roman emperor, visited Britain.  The Romans had invaded and conquered the Celts over 100 years earlier.  The Roman armies never made it all the way north into present day Scotland, and they continued to have trouble with the Picts, the native Scots at the time, who continually raided Roman positions to the south.  So Hadrian decided they needed a wall to keep them out.  He brought in engineers who began constructing the wall out of native stone.  When it was completed, the wall ran over 70 miles from Newcastle on the east to Carlisle and beyond on the west.  Here you can see Cathy standing on the wall! You can  also see it running along the top of the ridge very far into the distance.

As you can see the terrain is rugged, and there are places too steep to climb.  Hence the fence.

Every Roman mile (which is about 100 meters shorter than our mile today) the Romans built a tower into the wall.  From time to time you can see the remains of these towers.  It would hold a small group of Roman soldiers.  Every few miles the Romans would build a complete fort and position hundreds of soldiers there in order to protect Roman interests. We were able to see the remains of one of the forts.

Here is a picture of the floor of a heated room.  The Romans often built these "saunas"  in association with a bath or pool.  Since no pool was discovered there, we think it was just a heated room.  These stone pilings held up the floor and provided a place for warm air and smoke to heat a room. A few of the stone floor pieces are still there.  A fire would be built on one end and would suck air into the chamber and heat it. Heated air would in turn heat the floors, and then the heat and smoke would go out through holes in the wall.  This was the first central heating!

Another modern amenity is the latrine. In the past people would just go out in the woods, dig a hole, do their business and then cover it up.  But you can't do that in a fort.  If you are attacked you have to stay in the fort and continue to do your business inside the fort.  So they built a latrine.  Here is an artist's reconstruction of what we think the latrine at this fort would have looked like.

Here is how it looks today.

What you don't see is an intricate group of water channels into and out of the latrine area.  The seats in this latrine would have been made out of wood. I have seen latrine seats in Ephesus and Caesarea made of stone. 

Sadly, Hadrian's wall is no longer complete. Farmers through the centuries "borrowed' many of the stones to build sheep walls, homes and barns. But there are places where the intact wall remains and we were happy for the chance to see it.

On the way out of this region, we stopped to see a small temple built 1800 years ago just south of the wall.  The temple is dedicated to Mithra.  Mithra was a god worshipped initially in Persia (modern Iran), but who soon became the favorite deity of the Roman soldiers.  Over time the temple was destroyed and laid in ruins.  After more time, layers of dust and dirt settled on it.  Plants grew on it, died and decayed so that it was eventually underground in a boggy area of a farmer's field.  No one knew it was there.   In the 1950s, during a long period without any rain, this bog began to collapse.  Upon inspection a farmer found the top of an altar.  They called out the archaeologists who uncovered this small temple.  Many of the artifacts are today in a museum in Newcastle.  But some of the items including these altar stones are still there. 

We topped off our day with . . . . drum roll, please!  Nope, we didn't have scones.  Sorry for the build-up. We were both tried, went back to the hotel and had a light dinner before watching "Strictly Come Dancing."  If you want to know about this thrilling excursion into British television sometime, just ask us.  "Strictly" is the original, British version of "Dancing with the Stars." 

Tomorrow we head to the Lake District.  Calling for rain.  We don't care.