Holy Island

No, not I'm talking about England in general.

Yesterday we went to Holy Island, a small island just off of the eastern coast. It's famous for a few things, one being that St. Cuthbert, one of the most celebrated saints in England, lived there. It's also where the Lindisfarne Gospels were written, the island's causeway is only open during certain hours of the day, resulting in the occasional news story about unfortunate people getting stuck in the water after they try to cross at the wrong time, and they manufacture mead (yes, we did buy some).

Here is J and our roommate on our way to the "castle." The castle was built during Henry the blahblahblah's time (ok, so I wasn't paying that much attention) as a fortified building for soldiers (they were worried about attacks from the Scottish at that time). By the 19th century that threat had long past and the castle had fallen into ruin. The owner of the magazine country life bought it and hired an architect to transform it into a home. Now it's open to the public.



In the castle, where cannons once stood. Now there's a bench.

There were lots of photographers and bird watchers on the island. It was surprisingly hard to tell from a distance who has taking a picture and who was just watching for winged creatures.

This is part of the priory, now in ruins.




Mead! I can assure you my hair wasn't messy because I had already started drinking my purchase, but after an otherwise beautiful and sunny day (rare at this time of year) it had gotten a little windy at that point.

This is taken form the bus, on the way back through the causeway. As you can see, just directly next to the road there are puddles. In just a few hours the road would be completely covered with water.

Day 14 of Hadrian's Wall Walk

Happy Halloween!

Today was Day 14 our our coast-to-coast walk.
The weather report for today predicted clouds in Newcastle and rain in Carlisle.
We decided to take a risk and walk, even though at this point in the journey we're closer to Carlisle than Newcastle.

We were only rained on briefly, and fortunately were armed with two umbrellas, so weather-wise it turned out just fine. I found myself singing several times during the course of the day, so I think that means I enjoyed myself.

Just to shake things up a bit I'll start at the end.

The last thing we saw was Lanercost Priory. A portion of the priory, built in the 12th century, has been restored and is currently a working church. The rest has fallen into ruins.
Complete with tombs.
And, oddly enough, the disrepair hasn't stopped two burials, with two "recent" tombs, one dating from the Victorian age.



At first we thought this was just a random little gate as there was no signage near it. After a few minutes of walking though we saw a sign on the other side of this wall and realized we should have gone through it to continue on the path. Still no explanation why it's so small. I think we ended up deciding it was made by the English gnomes.


A furry cute cow.
Rain cloud!

This is the start of our trip, at the Birdoswald fort which we saw last time. This is the site of an old orchard which they are in the process of reviving. It was one of our shorter walking days, with the trip being only 4.3 miles and just under 4 hours. But, if there is a next time we will probably make up for it as Carlisle is only 12 miles away!

Somewhere over the ...

Rainbow!

No walking today because of the rain, but an excellent rainbow paid a visit.

More laying down, less walking

No hadrian's wall walk today. Jessamy's getting over a cold, and I'm not doing so great either.

But until next week, here's a short video I took last week that didn't make it into post (it's also my first YouTube upload!).

Day 13 of Hadrians Wall Walk

Yup, it's that time again! Yesterday was Day 13 of Hadrian's Wall Walk.

This time, we walked from Roman Army Museum to the Birdoswald Roman Fort which was 4.5 miles.

We took the train this time, as the journey is now taking over two hours on bus.

The weather report said it would be dry today, but we had our doubts when we arrived at the Roman Army Museum.


Our first site-seeing stop was Thirwall Castle. Built in the 14th century out of stone from Hadrian's wall by the rich family (this was a very dangerous area back then, and rich families built strong holds such as this) of Thirwall, it was later abandoned in the 17th century.


A (miniature?) horse.

An oven in Milecastle 48:
One of the best preserved staircases along the wall. Archealogists beleive that the stairway once reached 15 feet high.

The remains of three bridges. One was originally built at the same time of Hadrian's wall, but had collapsed less than 60 years later. The Romans rebuilt it. I'm guessing it had collapsed yet again as it was later rebuilt for a third time.I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture above, but since Roman times the river has moved! It's now running just past those green trees on the left.

This is J at Birdoswald, standing behind a Roman gateway.


If you look closely you might be able to tell that in the picture above some of the ground appears to be slightly raised. That's actually the outline of the yet-to-be-excavated headquarters of the Biroswald fort. And yes, there are sheep grazing around on this fort!

As part of the admission to the fort we could also see some excavation in progress.
Sadly the fort closed at 4 pm so we sat at a park bench and rested our feet until 5, then got on the bus to the Haltwistle Rail Station, and from there home.

Day 12 of Hadrian's Wall Walk

Yesterday we walked from Milecastle Inn, where we intended to start during our last failed attempt to walk, to the Roman Army Museum.

The weather report predicted light showers at 10:00am, and seeing as we're running out of time to complete the walk we thought, armed with our new wellies, we could cope with a little rain and wind.

Well, turned out to be not the greatest of decisions. We didn't actually start our walk until noon because, while we were riding on the bus, it started raining and the wind started to shake the bus (I made sure to put on my seatbelts). We ended up disembarking at Hexham and stayed in the tourist information centre until the weather cleared, then we walked to a local coffee shop (I think we took spot of one of the elderly regulars) to collect our thoughts. Soon the sun came out, the rain and wind stopped, and we took the next bus back out to hadrian's wall country.

On the way there we saw this:

Yup, that's a rain cloud.

But we decided to brave it anyway.

It was cold, and windy, and even the sheep decided to take it easy that day.





The wind was really strong, and at first I was highly amused, until of course we had to walk down a hill, in the wind. And by the second time we were hailed upon and the wind was strong enough where I was nearly knocked over I was rethinking the wiseness of our decision.

Finnally though, three miles away from where we started, the sun came out and the wind died (mostly) down.





Here I am, with my wind-swept hair trying to hold up Hadrian's wall near Walltown Crags.

I think this might be the highest part of the wall that we've seen.

We took shelter at Walltown Quarry, and then took the bus to Once Brewed visitor centre where we had a hot beverage and waited for the bus that would take us home.

Fort and York

A friend of mine from college came to visit over the weekend.

This is the first American friend I've seen in nine months, and during the course of her stay I was very acutely aware that I was an American in another county. Not that it's a bad thing to be American, but at some point in the past two years I had forgotten that people could automatically tell I wasn't from around here as soon as I open my mouth.

Our first stop was of course a Roman Fort.


This is Arbeia Roman Fort in South Shields, which was built to guard the North Sea and is not along Hadrian's wall. It was a huge fort, and at one point a military supply base.

Besides the ruins they had a reconstruction of what the commanding officer's house would look like. I believe the reconstructed house was built on the roman foundations.

The wall paper, by the way was all hand-drawn.

I wish I had taken a picture of the dining room. I hadn't actually remembered that they all lounged about and didn't actually sit down for dinner.

There was also a small museum, which had the best preserved remains of Roman chain-mail and a stone memorial alter of "Regina", and ex-slave. The alter depicted her spinning!

On Saturday we went to York. It was just as lovely the second time visiting.
A ruined abbey that was in the middle of a park.

Parts of the abbey used as the wall for a bed of flowers.

My favorite sign this weekend. You might not be able to make it out, but in the lower right corner it says "Ben".

We also visited the York Castle Museum, which we didn't get to go to last time. It turned out to be a huge (looked small from the outside) and interesting museum. One of the most fascinating things in the museum was a map of York. It looked as if it could be a normal functional map, the hospitals and landmarks clearly labeled in English. The map's legend however and all of the text surrounding the center of the map was in German. The hospital and military facilities had been carefully outlined with a ruler in red.

It's easy for me to forget, as I have only heard for the past two years very few brief references to the bombings. But this map was a shocking reminder how very real the bombings were.

11.5 of Hadrian's Wall Walk

We didn't actually walk along the wall, hence the title 11.5. We intended to, however after we got off the bus and were greeting by this nice view


we noticed the air was a bit more brisk than we had previously remembered in past walks. Which makes sense, actually. Two weeks ago my flat and the office became suddenly cold, as if summer had just passed and spring just passed a torch, and there no turning back. Emotionally though, we're not ready for the cold to set in yet. So despite the chill in the air and our thin cardigans we set off for our first stop, a brief detour, and technically a back track since it was a half mile to the east of our bus stop.

This is Mare and Foal, two Bronze Age standing stones, believed to have once been part of a circle and thought to date from 2100 BC to 700BC.

Long before we got to this point though we noticed that not only had the air temperature changed since we were here last, but there was also dew on the ground.

Lots of it. So by this point our feet were wet, and we decided that instead of walking for 5 miles in wet feet, or heading back home, we would take the bus to the dry Roman Army Museum, which we were intending on visiting the next leg of the walk anyway. After a visit to the museum and hot chocolate, tea, and a scone we walked around Walltown Crags.


Is it really just a question mark?

Arg, it's talk like a pirate day

It seems like only yesterday that my sentences were occasionally punctuated by an Argg. But in actual fact, it was a full year ago. Today, once again, is talk like a pirate day.

Sadly, a quick google search leads me to believe that not only is there no international talk like parrot day tomorrow, the logical day for such an event, but there's no international parrot day at all! So if you find yourself tongue tied and unable to begin sentences tomorrow then feel free to join me in starting your sentances with a squawk or a brwaawk in an unofficial and secret talk-like-a-parrot day.

World's oldest textile

Scientists have found the world's oldest textiles, a few pieces of 30,000 year old flax fibers (and dyed too!). You can read the NPR story here.

One week into Kristi (the sock)

I actually started this last week, but it hasn't looked very exciting and blog-worthy until now. The pattern is Kristi from Sock Innovation.

The first 20 or so rows of the pattern (I'm on 30 something now) went rather slow, but I seem to have now picked up speed. Though the first two rows took me a very long time. It seemed like random knits and purls, not a regular ribbing, and I was very paranoid that I would get it wrong, so I counted and compared what I had knit at least three times. On a positive note J has tried it on and it fits, and despite the fact that I knit tighter when I do cables! Also, this is one of my blackbean dyed yarns, so this sock is extra exciting.

PB & J

It's Jessamy's birthday today, and I made peanut butter cookies. Plain, with golden syrup in the middle (fail), and with jam in middle (put two together, and not only do you get a pb&j sandwich, but you also feel sick).