It was dry but windy as we walked to the nearby section of Hadrian’s Wall at Walltown. It was a bit of a hike, since the only sections of the wall that haven’t been completely cannibalised for building stones tend to be in rather inaccessible places.
Yes, it’s on top of that cliff in the distance. At this point I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it!
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We left our chicken and leek casserole in the Mr D’s Thermal Cooker, and went out exploring for the day. We started at the Roman Army Museum. I must say that I do admire these modern museum layouts. Plenty of audio and video, and a focus on the life of the subjects, not just the provenance of the archaeological finds. This approach is probably designed to appeal to children, but, hey, it works for me too!
Just a few of the exhibits that caught my eye:
Cavalryman
On our recent trip to Hadrian’s Wall, we stayed at a wonderful site called Herding Hill Farm. Just outside Haltwhistle, it was ideally located for our planned visits to the Roman sites, and it also had (because I’ve become a complete camping sybarite) fully serviced pitches which provide continuous water and drainage.
Today we crossed another small entry off the bucket list: a visit to the Roman fort at Vindolanda. This has been long in the planning, and it was every bit as interesting as we’d hoped. Not only are there extensive (and continuing) excavations, but there’s a reconstructed tower and a really engaging modern museum.
I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story:
A model of Vindolanda in its later manifestation. The fortified military area is in the foreground, the village behind it.
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