We left Yorkshire on Sunday and drove through the Yorkshire Dales. It was beautiful, so we decided to ignore it and make a seperate trip for it later. We were keen to get to the Lake District. Above is Langdale from Stickle Ghyll, a steep climb! if you can imagine a rock staircase about a mile high, in a howling gale. There were a few sunny moments, this was one.

Next day was wet and cloudy, as you can see from this pic of Coniston Water. We stuck it out, but the forecast was for more of the same, so we decided to go East to Hadrian’s Wall.

The weather here was pretty interesting too, massive cloud formations and bursts of sunshine. We had a really good, though exhausting, day, climbing up to the wall twice, at Walltown and Housesteads, and visiting two museums. The Roman Army Museum at Walltown was the most interesting, they had a 3D film of (people dressed up as) Romans and how they spent their time guarding the wall. Vindolanda, which I can’t stop calling Vindaloo, was the last thing we did, and we were pretty tired, so probably didn’t do it justice. The thing I found most interesting there was the collection of Roman shoes! which were very well preserved due to the conditions at the site. I’m a lot more interested in the facts of daily life, eg the multi seat latrine, than I am in any fighting.

Tomorrow we are heading further East, we are going to Newcastle, and up the Northumberland coast as far as Lindisfarne, stopping off at all the castles along the way, also to Cragside which is a stately home built by a Lord Armstrong, who made a lot of money in armaments. Interestingly, one thing we learned at the museum today is that one of the worst of the marauding tribes of outlaws along the border in later years (18th century) was called Armstrong! Same ones? Who knows!