Day 4 - Vindolanda

Distance Walked: 7.5km, Time Taken: 2h 13m, # Times Went Astray: 0, # Beers: None, but 1 big glass of red wine

 

 

Today I went out to walk along a section of Hardian's Wall and visit the Vindolanda Roman fort.  There are two railway stations on the line from Carlisle across to Newcastle that are roughly at the western and eastern-most sections of the interesting part of Hadrian's Wall.  There is a bus that goes from one to the other, stopping at various sites along the way.  This makes it relatively easy to visit the wall itself and various sites of interest without needing a car.  What would make it even more easy would be if they bothered to coordinate the train and bus schedules.  Can't have everything I suppose.

 

I took the train-bus combo to the The Sill this morning.  This is a national "discovery centre" which aims to teach people about the local landscape.  In reality, they have resigned themselves to be a good starting point for people wanting to do day walks along Hadrian's wall.  At least half a dozen of us used the centre for a pit stop and a place to buy supplies before heading out to the wall.  Below is a photo of my first glimpse of the wall.  The two women in the foreground were arguing about whether they were going in the right direction and if this was the wall they had heard talk of.  I didn't understand their confusion.  It looks pretty wall-like to me.

The weather this morning was fine with clear skies and very little breeze.  However, it was quite cool.  I think it got to all of around 8C during my walk.  Fine while I was walking but bloody cold if I stopped for a rest.  Even the cows here were rugged up. 

I got to Vindolanda around lunchtime but so did what appeared to be several bus loads of tourists.  I decided to look around the museum and have a late lunch.  Sadly, by the time I got to the cafe there weren't many options left.  I settled on something called a cheese savory roll.  The filling seemed to be grated carrot, red onion and cheddar cheese made into a paste with mayonnaise.   It wasn't as disgusting as it sounds, but neither was it particularly savory or of any taste at all.  For dessert I had a piece of coffee cake.  This has clearly been sliced and put out on display the day before, at least.  It also was homemade, but rather poorly, as there were pockets of flour that hadn't been mixed in.  If it hadn't been stale and had been properly mixed it would have been quite good.

After lunch I ambled around the ruins of the fort itself.  It was smaller than I was expecting, given it housed 1,000 troops in its heyday and would have had a town of civilians outside the walls providing services to all those men.  Although, I'm surprised there was a much of the fort still existing as there was.  All that good stone, just asking to be taken away and used in other buildings.

The weather was turning by mid-afternoon, with the clouds rolling in and the wind picking up, so I got the bus and, after a long wait, the train back to Carlisle.  

For dinner, I braved Cumbrian-Italian food again.  This time at Gianni's Pizzeria.  The owner, and most of the staff, spoke Italian to each other so I had high hopes, but was disappointed.  I had planned on getting a pizza, but then I saw one being brought out.  It had way too much cheese on top and was served with a side of chips - admittedly to a child.  Still, I opted for the cannelloni instead.  The filling was good, as was the sauce, and the pasta was properly cooked.  However, there was an Anglo-Saxon amount of sauce.  For dessert I tried their tiramisu.  On the plus side it was correctly made with ladyfinger biscuits and the cream to biscuit ratio was good.  However, the cream part tasted as it was just cream and didn't have any marscapone in it.  Also, there was barely any taste of coffee and none at all of marsala (as expected).  Sadly a Dull meal again.

I'm trying a Sardinian restaurant tomorrow night.