The first half of these pictures are just of us exploring the countryside of Northumberland. The second half shows our visit to Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda, which is an excavated Roman fort.

We drove down many curvy, one lane roads– which took two-way traffic, with little sight distance, and oddly had speed limits of 60mph– to explore some small towns and have lunch in a cute cafe. (Their grilled sandwiches are called toasties; the one shown is tuna and cheese.) We love getting a feeling of what it is like to actually live in a place. I am interested in capturing that feeling more than checking off tourist sites, although taking in the Roman influence in this area seemed important too.

Hadrian’s was was initially 3 meters wide and 18 feet tall, but now only remnants remain, since many of the stones were stolen over time. We met many people who were walking the whole 82 mile distance of the wall; in fact everyone else in our B&B was, with their luggage conveniently shuttled to their next lodging, so all they had to do was walk, carrying their lunch, made by the host. Honestly, that was more interesting than the wall itself, which was less impressive than expected.

Vindolanda, however, was interesting. It was a Roman outpost from 85 to 370 AD, and was inhabited by others until around 800 AD. Because of the layers of building on top of previous buildings, remnants were perfectly preserved without any oxygen to compromise them, and artifacts like well preserved shoes were found (7,000 of them up to size sixteen), as well as much more, including decipherable documents that tell about the life of the place. The museum there houses all that was found, and you too could volunteer there to dig stuff up. The estimate it will that 150 more years there to complete the dig.

Check out all this in the photos below.