MeyerBros

to be honest, i didn’t expect newcastle to be near as beautiful or exciting as it has been. well actually, i’ve seen very little of the city of newcastle, but the surrounding area is great. my mind has spent most of the trip so far in 100-300 a.d. (don’t ask me what that means). today we hiked a beautiful section of hadrian’s wall. apparently, roman emperor hadrian thought it’d be a cool idea to build a wall across northern england to keep the scots out of the roman land. this was built some time in the 2nd century, and much of it is still standing today. (we’re standing on top of the wall, and you can see it extending over the ridge in the background. it’s stone, with grass growing on top).

there’s a castle/fort every 5-8 miles, and then a tower every mile in between. we began in the ruins of housesteads fort and hiked east for 2 hours, some on the wall but mostly on the trail beside it. the ruins of housesteads fort itself are pretty darn cool, and include a very “advanced” latrine.

they sat on wooden benches around the edge of the room and water flowed in one side and out the other, so they basically had flush toilets. simply the fact that these stones (even the water troughs) remain 2000 years later boggles my mind… there was also a room (for the commander) where the floor was missing and we could see the gap under the floor for heated air that travelled up vents in the walls. man, this fort was more advanced than my house!

luckily, that’s a lie. but anyway, it was impressive.

tomorrow we see some puffins on an island, and a castle that’s still in use. it’s where the current duke and duchess (the percy family, who also owned warkworth castle) live. it’s the place where the quidditch matches were filmed for the harry potter movies, and the stadium is on the castle grounds. you should be jealous by now…

oh, by the way, i added photos to my last post too, so check that out again.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 4:00 pm by jonny and is filed under rants, friends, personal, jonny's life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.