Still at Hadrian's Wall today. We stayed up fairly late last night, talking with a couple from London who were staying in the B&smp;B as well.
The breakfast was very nice here, cereal and a hot breakfast. One of the things we learnt from the couple last night was that we should go
to the Roman Museum, because it had a really nice fly-over of the wall on video. After that, they said, we should go to Vindolanda which is
another ruin, but unlike yesterday's ruin, this one is still in the process of being excavated, and it's actually quite good.
So after breakfast, we headed to the Roman Museum, and watched the video. It actually was quite good: they had a CG fly-over of the Wall and the fort as it was in its heyday. Other than the video, however, there really wasn't all that much to see. Lots of old coins and things found in the excavations.
After that, we went to Vindolanda, which is still being excavated. This one was actually really good. There's this wall there that they've just uncovered. It's kind of leaning over, so you can see on one side (the side I've pictured here) that they've propped it up with supports. In the middle of the wall, they've actually rebuilt some of it so that it stands on it's own. I assume that they'll eventually do the same with the rest of the wall - but it just goes to show how much work goes into uncovering just one wall.
Also at Vindolanda, there was another museum. But this one had something that the Roman Musuem didn't have - it had actual letters written
by real Romans that had been found on the site (along with translations from the original Latin, of course). The climate here allows for
certain conditions to develop such that the parchments and slates that the Romans wrote on were able to be preserved - ink and all - so that
we were able to read them and get a good insight into Roman life. The letters that were on display we all sorts of different things. There
were letters asking for orders (and complaining about lack of beer for the troops), or a man pleading with "his magesty" for mercy - he was
accused of a crime he didn't commit, or so he claimed. It was really good.
After Vindolanda, we had lunch at the café. Actually, before lunch my mum went back to the car to get my grandmother. She hadn't come down to the musuem because it was down a big hill. But once we got there, we found out that we could have driven down and parked there. So my mum went back up, but I waited for them to come back. Anyway, I waited and I waited, and no show. My phone didn't have any reception so I could call and ask where they were (I even tried going back up to the ruins to see if I had reception there). Anyway, an hour later I got sick of waiting, so I just bought my lunch. They finally showed up while I was eating - they had gotten lost looking for the way down! And when I say "lost", I mean really lost - what should have taken about 5 minutes to drive, took them 45 minutes!
After lunch, we went to these gardens, but I thought it was a bit boring (we have gardens in Australia!) so I just stayed in the car and read my book. Dinner we had at a pub down the road. It was very nice, huge serves as usual. After dinner, I played pool against my mum (thankefully, I won - I don't think I could have lived it down if I'd lost!) Ended up going to sleep around 9:30 or 10pm.