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 |
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