Day 13 - Hadrians Wall

Josh as a roman guard

 Thursday 5th August 2010

Please please listen to us...we have travelled all over Europe to see Roman sites, little did we realise one of the best of them all was sitting in our very own country. Housesteads in Northumberland is a fantastic place and even though English Heritage and National Trust seem to be fighting it out as to who owns what don't let that put you off from coming here. For example you park the car in a National trust car park, buy your sandwiches from their cafe and then go to the shop to purchase your tickets, only to be told that you can't buy them from here. You climb to the top of the hill only to find that English Heritage have the smallest shop at the top...crazy...anyway ignore our weird ramblings. So Hadrians wall...surely you have heard it yes? well if not click here on this corporate linky poo.. Earlier this year they set beacons off all along the wall at night and that would have been amazing to see. So lets hone in on this part of

Smile as you are trapped!

 Hadrians wall. Yes another linky poo, but make sure you look at all the photos as they are better than ares! Housesteads has it all...well ok it doesn't have everything, but when you are 2000 years old I hope that you look as good as this place. What amazes us about this place is that you really get a sense of how hard life must have been like all those years ago as a roman soldier. Its so barren, cold and windy in the 21st century...let alone what it would have been like in the 3rd century....and when you take away all the roads you wonder how the heck they got all that rock up there in the first place. I am sure that our roman ancestors would have

Travel bug central

found it intriguing that geocachers would place caches in this area. And what a great selection of caches they are in this area. The caches themselves are easy to hide and easy to find, there are so many rocks around that I would be surprised if these get muggled easily....and as you start walking down the Hadrians wall path you will start to see some glorious views and lovely paths. We had collected a whole stack of travel bugs and geocoins on our 2 week  tour of the UK and it seemed a great place to take a photo of them all...and here is that photo. I can see a tear in your eye already, I know it.

Josh using his mommy to climb

 The ruins themselves show just how advanced a civilisation they were....they had central heating (and I don't mean they had radiators) and they had flushing toilets (no not quite like we had today) and 2000 years later we still can see them. Josh was loving it today, he had small walls to climb up and down and also plenty of hills to climb up and down. He was literally jumping off all the walls which was crazy for a 2 year old. Josh loves climbing and climbing and did we mention climbing? This is the second time we have been here and I would be shocked to think it will be the last...you quickly forget what it is like....plus we didn't do all the

Mr Shiltonpig and his arty photo

caches and lets face it, thats a good enough reason to come back too! The photo to the left is Mr Shiltonpigs attempt at being all arty in a photograph and so please feel free to be shocked, stunned and amazed. Well done to all those people who placed caches here....we thank you!!

Mr Shiltonpig on the toilet