Northumberland Holiday - Day 3 - A day with the Romans!

We had earmarked Thursday to go to Vindolanda, Housteads and other sections of Hadrian's Wall. The weather was poor when we got up so we had an hour or so in the lounge at the guesthouse reading but as there seemed to be no improvement in the weather , we set off for Haltwistle and then up to the General Wade road and Vindolanda, about 4 miles from Haltwhistle. It was rather grey at all our locations throughout the day - apologies, therefore, for the quality of some of the pictures.





After you pass through the ticket office you come to a replica Roman courtyard which sets the scene prior to going out into the grounds where there are many Roman buildings that have been excavated and much material found which is on display at the museum at the far end of the grounds.

The area down by the museum.

You are not allowed to take photographs in the museum, but it is extremly interesting with many artefacts on show that have been excavated. There is also a very nice restaurant area (can highly reccomend the cheese and onion toasties) and on the walls are copies of the roman writing sheets that were found during one of the archeological digs. These are shown below.

Back out to the gardens near the museum and then a climb back up to the grounds containing remains of the Roman village.

An old crofters hut that has been converted into a workshop.

We then moved on from Vindolanda to Housteads, probably the finest example of a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. Again because it was early in the season and the weather was not very good, there were hardly any other people around which helped greatly taking photographs of the excavations. It was quite misty at the top of the hill which gave a very sureal feel to the place - one almost expected a Roman soldier to appear from round the corner of a building at any time.

These were the pillars for the underfloor heating and drainage which we had seen a similar example of when we went to the Colluseum in Rome in 2008.

On the way back down to the Car Park we went across the Vallum. This was a 10 metre wide ditch that the Roman's dug on the south side of Hadrian's Wall and is usually between ¼ and ½ mile from the wall depending upon the terrain being encountered.

We then drove round to Steel End to look at another section of the wall.

Our next stop was at Caw Gate. Once you have bought a car parking ticket for the day (£3) this enables you to park at any of the car parks along the wall so you can move on from one place to another and walk up by the side of the wall to look at the various sections.

Our penmultimate visit was to the wall near Cawfiled's Quarry where we had been on the Tuesday evening. Here the wall climbs up to the top of the cliff overlooking what was the old quarry and there is also Milecastle 42 located here as well.

Our final stop westwards along the wall was at Walltown Crags where Milecastle 45 is located. This is again a sheer drop on one side of the wall - very useful from a defensive point of view.