Roman Ruins

Above: Vindolanda Bath House

Below: Hadrians Wall as seen from Housesteads Fort

We stayed a night in Hexham after we went to see the reindeer.

Hexham is a small town near to Hardrians' Wall, and we thought it'd be a good idea to overnight it there before taking off to have a look.

First stop was the Housesteads Fort. Amy (who had seen enough "stones in the ground")decided she'd like a walk and trooped on foot to Vindolanda, about four miles walk away while I basically ran from feature to feature (Via Praefectorum to Latrines to Barracks...) before jumping in the car and driving over to meet her.

Vindolanda is a very large site - large enough that the archaeologists expect to not finish up there for something like another two hundred years.

To give you an idea of the complexity of the site, before the stone fort complex was built, there had been something like seven iterations of wood-built fortification on the site, each demolished and then buried to provide a level building surface for the next fort on top as the old one became too rotten to use.

The anaerobic (ie, low in oxygen) soil conditions meant that many organic items survive to this day; this is the sort of thing that's most interesting - old pots are all very well, but there is a magic in looking at 2000 year old leather and textile remains.

Vindolanda is most famous for the letters recovered from the site. Again, preserved due to the soil conditions, they are wooden leaves either written on in ink, or else, a waxen layer is inscribed with a sharp point. These writings are unique in their survival and have no real parallel outside of Egyptian papyrus.

Carrington Reindeer Farm

These reindeer are kept on about 1000 acres of land in the mountains just south of Inverness. When they hear the ranger call they come running for their food (although they could survive by themselves if they had to). They're tame enough to be hand fed but tourists, and show a suprising amount of personality.
These mountains are one of the few places where the red squirrel can be found, one put in a brief appearance when we were at a cafe. they're slowly being driven out by the grey squirrel (from America). Grey squirrels eat the hazelnets and acorns at an earlier stage of ripeness than the red squirrels, who are a bit more picky with their nuts, and often go hungry as a result.