Over the Wall and Into Scotland

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Today we are visiting the Great Wall, travelling up the east coast, dotted with Castles, crossing the boarder and ending up at Edinburgh. Our day started full of sunshine and after a quick breakfast we headed to the Great Wall. You could be forgiven for thinking I was talking about the Great Wall of China - that is coming in a couple of months. I am talking about Hadrian's Wall. It is huge! Spanning across Northern England, it was originally built as a northern frontier for the Romans. We visited Vindolanda, the ruins of a Roman fort village that supported the Roman patrols of the wall.

Vindolanda was quite a find when it was first uncovered. The contents of the fort, that once stationed over 5,000 soldiers, were well preserved due to the low oxygen content of the soil that built up over the ruins. The oldest written records in Britain were found there on wooden tablets that were thrown out when the fort was abandoned during the demise of the Roman Empire. The owners of the site have done an excellent job displaying the uncovered artefacts. They have even gone to the effort of reconstructing a section of the wall (real wall several km's away) and several buildings modelling Roman life in the third century.

We left Hadrian's wall at midday and headed up the coast to Edinburgh. Apparently that should have taken us 2-3hrs. It took about 4-5hrs. Sure we stopped for lunch at a massive castle, but we must have also taken some 'long cuts' as we tried to wind our way up the coast for a spot of 'castle spotting'. We finally made it to Edinburgh with just enough time to catch the open top sightseeing bus. This method of viewing a historic city never fails to deliver. In short Edinburgh is quite an interesting city (one of the best yet) and I am looking forward to seeing more of it tomorrow. It's a shame we haven’t got a couple of days here - but I guess there is only so much you can cram into a 90 day site seeing extravaganza ;-) Till next time...

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Photos

Revolution Road
Edinburgh actually has more green space per capita than any other major city in the world.

Edinburgh Mulberry House
A famous writer lived here...can't remember who!