We spent a week at Easter staying near Hadrian’s Wall. Wuffy is totally obsessed with Romans at the moment and he loved every second of it. On the last morning he almost cried (I could see his bottom lip going) because he didn’t want to go home. What he doesn’t know is that we have booked to go back for a week in August

First a few compliments to places. David rang lots of sites before we went to find out if they could feed us. Vindolanda went out of their way to ensure they had beans for jacket potato (they don’t offer beans as a topping normally) and they had bought soya milk especially. So a huge thumbs up to Vindolanda.

We found quite by accident a vegetarian café in Hexham called Hexham Tans, it was only about 10.30 but I went in and had a chat about lunch, they said they could make us anything we wanted but they didn’t have soya milk. We went back at lunchtime and they had been out and bought some soya milk especially for us, so another big thumbs up there.

Most of the other sites only have tiny cafes the sort where you can get a sandwich and drink but not much else. However it was nice to be able to eat lunch out on two days rather than having sandwiches every day.

 We visited the following sites:-

Vindolanda

Roman Army Museum

Corbridge Roman Town

Chesters Roman Fort

Hexham Abbey

Prudhoe Castle

Hexham Old Gaol

All of which were excellent except the Roman Army Museum which was very disappointing the advertised barrack room and store room no longer exist and there really wasn’t an awful lot to look at. That said it was worth the visit to see the Eagle Eye film it was just a shame you could not buy it on DVD as we would have done so.

We also walked along the wall from both Steel Rigg and Cawfields so we saw lots of wall going over dramatic (and very windy) countryside, a milecastle and a turret.

A few photos of places

The wall and a milecastle, this was just near Cawfields Quarry

With a Roman soldier at Vindolanda

 Pure joy at Vindolanda

 Walking in the footsteps of the Romans – standing on the actual floor of the granary at Corbridge

 Bathhouse at Chesters

 On Guard at the Temple of Mithras  

I was going to add a few more pictures but wordpress is being awkward so I’ll stop here