Hadrian's Wall

We drove five hours or so the first day, almost up to the border with Scotland to Hadrian's Wall. (Contrary to popular belief, the wall is actually solidly inside England...) The wall itself stretches for 73 miles, so we stopped at a place called Housteads Roman Fort, which as the name suggests, is one of many forts that Romans built along the wall to house garrisons of soldiers. The surrounding countryside was beautiful and rugged and the ruins made it relatively easy to imagine life two millenia ago on the far northern border of the Roman Empire.

Hadrian's Wall spread out from either side of the fort, and it was so beautiful, and amazingly well preserved given its age. The Emperor Hadrian ordered it built in 122 to solidify existing borders of the empire rather than continuing to expand. There were long periods of peace and trade along the wall with the northern tribes, but also stretches of war. Eventually it was abandoned when the Romans left Britain around 400, although portions of it continued to be used as fortifications, and in medieval times people built fortified houses within the old forts.

When we first got there, before we could see the wall, the kids had to run off some steam at the playground. They were very happy to stretch their limbs after their rather crowded car ride squashed in amongst pillows and camping supplies.



Then we set off on the path from the car park (see how I used the proper English term there?!) about half a mile to the fort and wall. The walk was beautiful in itself, but it was cold. Apparently, Roman soldiers didn't like serving along the wall because the weather was so much colder than they were accustomed to, coming as they did from farther south. They even found letter fragments of a soldier writing home asking for warm underwear because of the cold. (The kids liked that detail.)


 That's not the wall below, just a regular stone farm wall (although stones from the wall were borrowed centuries ago for such uses, so maybe it does have some Hadrian's wall in it.)



 At the top of the hill they had a little museum set up, and Rebecca enjoyed dressing as a Roman soldier. She was happy here, just trying to look fierce for the occasion. I'd enlist in her garrison, wouldn't you?



Here are some of the remains of the fort. These are the walls of the vicus, the community that sprung up outside the fort (on the England side) for wives and families, as well as for traders who did business with the soldiers. Soldiers weren't technically allowed to marry, but they did anyway, and snuck out to meet with their families when they could.


These are the remains of the hypocausts for under-floor heating for the fancy digs of the praetor. He definitely had it better than the regular soldiers, who were squashed tightly into barracks. (The kids could empathize at this point.)


These under-floor columns, on the other hand, were to circulate air and prevent rodents in the granary. It was huge, understandable given that they had to store food for 800 soldiers.

And here is the wall! You can see how wide it is since Eric and both kids are all standing on it in a bunch. Pretty amazing engineering. It just runs along this ridge that you can see on the right side of the wall in this picture. It's surprisingly wide and high and hard to imagine that they built 73 miles of it in only six years! I wouldn't have wanted to be a Roman soldier or slave I don't think.


There it goes winding along the ridge into the distance.


Here's more further down from the fort, partly overgrown with grass. Still impressive. You can walk almost its length, but we only went a small way from the fort, and Eric went a bit further. When the kids are older maybe we'll backpack the popular Hadrian's Way along the wall. Really so beautiful.



And here's Justin by the museum on our way back to the car.


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