Thursday, November 26, 2009

Proof that I've been to Scotland

I took Bill to England two years ago last October/November for my grandfather's 99th birthday. Since this was the second time Bill had ever been off this continent (he went to Hawaii once), we decided to cram as much into the three weeks as possible. After heading down to Devon with my parents to see my grandparents, my aunt Hilary gave me a few driving lessons (it was very nice of her to put her car at such risk), and Bill and I rented a car (well, I rented a car. Nobody wanted Bill to try and drive on the other side of the road, including Bill) and headed back to London (with a side trip to Stonehenge) where we met up with my brother. After a few days in London, we took off on a road trip that went up the M1 up through Leeds (I might do another post on the Royal Armory at Leeds) and then cut across through Jedburgh to Edinburgh. Bill was in archeologist heaven the entire time.

Before we got to Scotland, we had to stop at Hadrian's Wall (Phil, does this count as another post about you? It does have photos of you...). You can see in this photo that the wall was built as two parallel walls, and then the interior was filled in with rubble and concrete: There were several forts along the wall. This is the ruins of Vercovicium (Housteads) The pillars supported a raised floor (some of which is still there). Hot air from wood burning stoves circulated under the floors for central heat. The Romans were big on comfort. The granary:The latrines:And an artist's rendition of what the latrines probably looked like:We could tell we were getting close to the border, because we met a large Border Collie. He looked very similar to and was about the same size as (huge) the one my parents had for their first 12 years of marriage. We finally made it to the Scottish border, and took the typical touristy pictures:Bill is in the Vauxhall Astra in the background because it was cold and rainy and he's a wuss.
Next post - maybe some actual photos of Scotland....
All photos taken with my Canon PowerShot A540.