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.

In the Orkneys

If you were wondering...

Today is our last morning here in the Orkney Islands. We came here via ferry after we left Inverness where we drove our hire-car to John o' Groats and Gill Bay to board. It dropped us off near Kirkwall from where we drove to Stromness.

I've enjoyed the neolithic archaeology - Skara Brae, Maes Howe, the Stones of Stenness and so on - while Amy has enjoyed the accents.

We stayed overnight here in Kirkwall in a little B&B that is plastered all over with an insane variety of garden ornaments whilst the inside positively drips with stuffed toys of all sorts. The woman who runs the place is an "explainer". I stood there through a three minute lecture on how to open and close the doors which I could hardly understand because of the density of her accent.

I never really thought that people said things like dinnae and cannae, but now I know it's true...

The Orkneys have been extraordinarily beautiful besides being rainy, haily and COLD. We went yesterday to one of the outlying islands and found ourselved in a birdwatchers "hide" that came equipped with binoculars and telescopes and were lucky to be joined by a tean from the organisation that runs and maintains these sorts of facilities who explained to us how they maintained the wetland - very interesting. We also found and explored the Burroughstown Broch, and it was interesting to note the similarity between this building form and the round houses of Skara Brae.

We're both well and having a great time. More photos when we are not on a public access machine!

Where are they now?

Ahem, in Ireland, done Wales, sterting to do Scotland tomorrow. Pictures to foolw.

To be sure, to be sure...

The picture is of Fishguard Fort in Wales. We walked there amd back while we were killing time waiting for the ferry to Rosslare in Ireland. The fort was built in the 1770s when the town was bombarded by a Franco-Irish privarteer in lieu of a ransome.

We sailed for Ireland then flopped in a nice hotel in Rosslare befor taking the bus on a fairly hair-raising journey to Dublin. Another hotel, a trip to the Guiness factory and a night on the town.

Now Amy's asleep and I'm soon to follow because we are flying to Inverness tomorrow.

Good night.

Since Poland...

... We've come down through Slovakia to Hungary; Budapest to be sure, where we went on a lovely river cruise along the Danube with dinner. I recommend the Svent Istvan cathedral asa place to see.

Then to Austria where we poked through the Schonbrun palace. We had an afternoon activity booked but dropped out to do our own things (an art galley and a museum) before going out for dinner in a little town in the Vienna Woods where we ate schnitzel until we groaned, fought back the fruit flies who were after our wine and sand the theme to Skippy the Bush Kangaroo to a piano accordion backing track.

Austria has a severe obsession with the Empress Elizabeth - or "Sisi". She seems to have been the Princess Di of the 1890s!

We're in Prague tonight and will put some photos up just as soon as blogspot get their fingers out and correct their technical issues!

Auschwitz

It has taken us a few days to digest this experience and here finally are a few notes.
First, there are the physical facts of the site. What most people think of as Auschwitz – the place with the sign that says “Arbeit Macht Ffrei” - is the smaller of three sites, although it is by far and away the most intact. Auschwitz II Birkenau is the largest and it covers acres and acres of ground.

It was also the main killing center. It was the place where the rains would pull up; there would be a selection on the platform where – if the labour was needed – the fit and healthy people would be pulled out of the line. The “unfit”were the old people, the pregnant women and the children . An SS doctor decided your fate in seconds.

The place killed 6000 people in a day. You would be marched off to a changing room where you'd leave your clothes all neatly bundled so you could collect it when you came out of the showers, only you never came out. The shower-heads were dummies and instead of water you got Zyklon-B, an agent which was used to disinfect clothing, but was basically cyanide gas.

Today there are displays explaining the process in detail. Hardest to take there are the piles of booty stolen from the dead.

Some of us found different things upsetting. Some found the 'suffocation” cells bad where were kept four people at a time as punishment. For others, it was the huge pile of spectacle frames. For others it was the human hair the Germans made into a coarse canvas-like textile. Others yet again were disturbed by the pile of children's shoes.

There were other things too.

We both agree that one of the most terrible things about this dreadful place is that the people going to their deaths here had no idea what was going on. They were tricked from start to finish by ruthless, men who told them to pay for their train tickets, to label their luggage, to fold up their clothing, to make sure they kept their shoes together so they could pick them up afterwards.

Was that Poland?

As I write this I'm sitting up in bed in Budapest.

From the top of the page down are the St Anthony Church in Kracow from the 12th Century, Mammoth bones from the cathedral in Krackow - people used to think they were the bones of dragons and finally from Bar Bla-bla in Warsaw, just a few beers being consumed.

We've spent the past couple of days in Poland, mostly in Warsaw and Krackow but have been too busy to even get to an internet connection and write this all up, so I'll just give a very brief run-down before I shut off the lights and go to bed.

We spent our first couple of nights in Warsaw where we toured the city, looking at the various monuments. The Poles are big on monuments, and to be fair they have plenty of depressing history to monumentalise.

We've been to Auschwitz, a 700-year-old salt mine near Krackow (or Krackov as the locals pronounce it), the meticulously recreated town centre of Warsaw where destrtruction of the city was at about 85% by the time the Germans were through with the place and the really charming medieval heart of Kracow. Today we left Poland (with an 08:00 shot of honey vodka courtesy of the tour director along with POLISH DONUTS) and came to Hungary via Slovakia which latter place everyone thought very pretty; it was snowing lightly as we had lunch which excited we Australians on the tour, but the Canadians were hardly impressed by at all. Oh, and Amy got to pat a dog which made her day - Amy likes dogs, but the feeling is not always reciprocated.

I'll write some more tomorrow - it's time for bed now and I'm really needing the sleep!