Unintentional Geocaching at Hadrian's Wall

After an excellent stay at the String of Horses Inn in Faugh, we set out eastward along Hadrian's Wall (yet another World Heritage Site).  The wall was built by the Romans in the second century A.D. to keep the unconquerable Picts in Scotland and marked the Northwestern extreme of the Roman Empire.  It was quite a feat spanning the entire width of the island from coast to coast over 80 miles.  It was also built along some of the most forbidding ridge lines in the region adding both to its security and difficulty to build.

Mom at Hadiran's Wall

After exploring a couple sections of the wall we came to an area called Cawburn Pass.  The Romans built milecastles every mile along the length of the wall, Cawburn has the ruins of one such outpost (Milecastle 42).  We hiked about half a kilometer to the wall.  There are gaps in the wall which we learned were due to quarrying of rock throughout the centuries, often removing the entire ridge that the wall was set upon.  But in areas where the wall still exists it is an impressively strong structure considering it has been exposed to the soggy, windy climate of the borderland moors for almost two millenia without maintenance.

Geocache at milecastle 42.

While at Cawburn, Mom noticed something lodged up under the wall.  I investigated and discovered that the English Heritage Trust had planted a geocache in the milecastle.  We opened it and found a booty of pirate related trinkets.  We left a note in the log and carefully placed it back under the wall (probably a tad more camouflaged than before).

Twice Brewed Inn and Pub

After Cawfield, we made a brief stop at the Housesteads Fort near a town called Twice Brewed (we couldn't resist stopping for lunch at the Twice Brewed Pub), before heading north for Scotland.  We arrived at the border by mid afternoon, just in time to see some strange guy back his car through traffic, so he could park it on the sidewalk next to the "Welcome to Scotland" marker and get a picture of it (it wasn't even that nice of a car) with the sign.  After waiting for him to clear out, we took a few pictures ourselves and headed for Edinburgh, where we arrived at our rented flat just in time to grab some fish and chips takeout and watch the season premier of Doctor Who on BBC-1!

Welcome to Scotland!

~Shawn