Wall Walk 2013: Day 8: Walwick to Halton Redhouse and Corbridge Roman Town (9 miles, 4.5 hours)

Warm and sunny today, and I decided to forego the sunscreen, so my south-facing arm and cheek and ear are lobster-like this evening. For the moment, they burn more than my blisters, which is a welcome distraction. Perhaps I should use the capsacin cream I brought for sore muscles to make the sensation symmetrical.

Here (above right) the Wall peeks a shoulder out from under the modern road, and gorse masses in the Vallum alongside

Daisy here very much hoped someone would throw her stick again (and again)

Sheep that are to be

Sheep that was

I am dubious of the travel agent's itinerary mileage. Although the going was easier today than the last two days, it didn't feel like we were walking any faster today than the first few days, but we arrived at our B&B by 2PM and didn't feel like we had walked 9 miles. No one answered our ring, but the day was gorgeous and the B&B a magnificent stone farmhouse with stone outbuildings around a courtyard in back and a formal garden with sweeping views in front, so we were content to wait on benches in the shade (I) or sun (Pop).

It was still early when we were let in, so I proposed getting a taxi into Corbridge to look at the Roman Town Museum and mail a postcard to my UIC advisor, whose in-laws descend from Corbridge stock.

The museum was a pleasant surprise. Smaller than Vindolanda or Housesteads, less glitzy and polished than the Roman Army Museum, but well thought out in a quiet, slightly old fashioned way, with a nice audio tour that led one through the excavation and explained what one was looking at. Most of the buildings are just foundation outlines, and their uses not known with certainty, but there are two impressive granaries with raised, vented floors, partially intact, and several nice street drains.

Granary floor slabs with ventilation channels below

ventilation channels, wall w/buttresses, drainage gutter

Granary walls with buttresses

Granary portico pillar

The portico pillar's base rests at the level of the street when the granaries were first started; the top stones behind the pillar are the street level 300 years later. That is a rate of accumulation slightly faster than is happening in my yard at home, where I have found garden edging stones 6 inches below the current ground level (the house was built c. 1950, so about an inch of accumulation every 10 years, if that edging was laid when the house was new).

"The only mullioned Roman vent in Britain"

Street drains (here and below)

Our taxi driver said he has a second home in central Florida, which I thought a bit unusual, even for a US taxi driver, so I asked him how he came to have that. Apparently he and his wife went to the US on holiday many years ago; his wife had seen a real estate advertisement in a magazine--if you came to tour the property, the real estate company would put you up and pay your expenses for a few days, and the wife thought that would be a good way to extend their holiday for cheap. But she loved the place; they bought it and have gone once or twice a year for almost 50 years now. One neighbor hails from Michigan, the other from Chicago.

It being payday (the last workday of the month), our snowbird thought the pubs and restaurants in town would be swamped and we wouldn't be able to find dinner. Since he said the food at the pub near the B&B was good, we had him drop us there after our museum visit. But the pub was empty and no dinner to be had. It is "Rat Pack Night" and we could have stayed for food and entertainment later in the evening, at 25 pounds each. But Pop is not a late owl nor fond of loud music in crowded bars, so I didn't even ask what Rat Pack is (Googling suggests it is probably swing revival, which I would have enjoyed--and probably regretted in the morning with twelve miles of walking ahead). The bar maids were willing to pull us a pint, however, and had a small selection of junk food, so we sat outside in the sun and had beer and crisps (potato chips) and oatmeal bars and KitKats for dinner, then walked the mile back through sheep pastures to the B&B.