Hadrian’s wall

We arrived at one of the forts at about 16:30 so didn’t have much light left.  There is not much of the original wall left but the area we were going to see was about 30 minutes walk from the car park. 

We had a really great trek up to it and it was pretty amazing to imagine the logistics of constructing it in such wild lands.  The ambition of those in charge is truly incredible, its hard to imagine anyone nowadays even considering such a difficult undertaking.  Today its probably the equivalent of the sea defenses that have been recently constructed in Holland and probably need to be constructed around the coast of Britain within the next 50 years.

The scale of the wall is difficult to imagine, in this pic two of my kids are dwarfed by it and it was much taller when originally constructed.  I guess most of the stones have been raided by locals to build dry stone walls and houses.

The grass at the top of the hill was really incredible, cropped very short with bolders all over and very spongy. 

Even those of us with Arthritis couldn’t resist running around on it.   However those of us who slipped over soon discovered that not only was it spongy, but it was also holding a lot of water as Debbie and Jenny found out.  We would have loved to walk a lot more as it was a really nice crisp night, but it was getting pretty dark by the time we got back to the car and headed back to Carlisle for the night.