Same Shirt, Different day-2012 Adventures of the "Devonport Wonder Babes"

Friday 13th July 2012

Left Edinburgh at about 10 am and headed south, through various small towns in Scottish Borders including Jedburgh, which was having some sort of major carnival including kids on  Shetland ponies, big horse running down the road and   mountain bikers. Seemed like the whole town and surrounding areas were involved as cars parked for miles along roadsides.

Then across the border through the Northumberland National Park back into England and along the road running just south of Hadrian’s Wall and stopped at Housesteads, the remains of a Roman fort on the Wall, which is  a World Heritage site shared by Northumberland National Park, English Heritage and National Trust  combined and was also a working sheep farm. Existed from mid first century AD to Roman withdrawal from Britannia in 490 AD and was mostly staffed by soldiers from what is now Belgium, Germany plus local people.  We think you would have been out of favour in Rome to be posted to this furthest part of the Empire!  Had to walk about half a mile uphill from carpark to the new museum which explained the layout and history of the site with short film also.

Not raining while we were there so had great walk around the whole site for at least an hour. Very impressive and quite easy to imagine the Romans there.

Carried on into Lake District and wended our way down to Hawkshead through beautiful mountains and lakes to the Hawkshead  Youth Hostel on a lake, another former country house. Our 4 bedded room was in the annexe out the back in the “Beatrix Potter” wing and we were in the “Peter Rabbit” room. Old but very comfortable and we all slept about 9 hours. Had dinner in the dining room in the hostel watching the antics of 4 baby rabbits on the back lawn.


Hawkshead YHA

Dinner at Hawkshead