Edinburgh Waverley Railway Station

We’ve arrived in Scotland! I’m looking forward to seeing it in the afternoon sun tomorrow. It was gray and rainy today.

We left Newcastle, after a hearty breakfast and a great cup of coffee at a local Italian cafe. Our first stop was Hadrian’s wall. Although you can hike the entire 73 miles of wall that stretches from coast to coast in northern England, we decided on a single stop at Housestead’s Roman Fort. It is the most complete Roman fort in England. The weather varied from mist to rain, so we geared up before walking the half mile from the car park to the museum and fort. The wind was blustery and fairly unpleasant as we walked up the hill. Fortunately, the museum was warm and dry, so we lingered for a bit looking at the recovered artifacts and a short historical video. When we ventured out again, the rain turned to a light mist then stopped altogether, but the wind did not. I can’t imagine being a Roman soldier and getting stuck on this windy hill with a short skirt, while my friend Fortuitous is sunny himself in Malta. However, the wind did dry out my pants, which had gotten soggy on the walk up. Anyhoo, we first went to the small portion of the wall, where you are allowed to walk on the top of it. From there we wandered into the fort. The prized ruin is the Roman latrine. I didn’t count, but it would have had toilet seats for about a dozen people at one time. The Romans had a sophisticated drainage system that swept away the waste regularly. In another move of planning excellence, the latrine was built in the south east corner of the fort, so any smell would have blown away from the complex. Brilliant.

The fort was fairly large with barracks in neat rows and a hospital on the grounds. It was hard to picture the enormity of the fort, but information signs, strategically placed around the old stones, helped to spark my imagination. From the south side, I could see the wall stretching over the hills and out of sight. At the time of Hadrian’s rule, he decided to stop expanding the empire and protect what was most worthwhile. The wall was his northern boundary on the British isle, as the tribes to the north weren’t worth the continual headache. It was a simple cost/benefit decision; the resources he could strip from the north simply weren’t worth the frequent military battles.

Following the visit to the fort, we headed to Scotland. I can’t remember where I heard about the Falkirk wheel, but I’ve wanted to see it ever since. As noted in a previous blog from this trip, there is an extensive canal system in Great Britain, and boats are able to move along the canals via multiple locks. Before this ingenious invention (the Wheel), boats had to transit 11 locks to get from the Union canal down to the Forth & Clyde canal. This would have meant operating about 44 separate gates to make the journey. However, some imagineer decided that you could cut out all of the locks and replace them with a single wheel that would carry a boat up or down the 100 feet in one swing. This is how it works. Let’s say a boat wants to go up to the Union canal. It will pull into a “bay”, and a door will raise behind it, thereby keeping the boat locked in an enormous box filled with water. The wheel will then turn one-half circle to bring the boat up to the canal. Once there, the door is dropped, and the boat can motor away. We watched one of the tourist boats go up, and it took about 20 minutes. I think. I was standing in a cold rain, with strong wind gusts, so it felt like it took an hour. My hands were frozen by the time the boat got to the top, but I was determined to video the whole process in time lapse. Check it out!Read more