Oh Yeah?
The eastern end of Hadrians wall is what it is – seg-e-doonam. Right in Newcastle and ending on the river Tyne. A major Roman fort way back when, the remains of which were only unearthed a few years ago. It is amazing as the site has been built on at least three times with newer homes, factories or wharf buildings over some 1600 years, all of which were demolished in time to make way for the each of the next developments until this permanent disclosure was made…
All you can see is the outline of the various buildings but the information centre under the viewing tower gives you a full tundown of the history of the site. There is still a part of the wall visible to the top right of the floor plan but it is actually outside the preserved site. It is altogether an amazing story.
Coming out of Newcastle travelling south we were confronted by this monster – an 800,000 pound ‘Angel’.Read the blurb. I really don’t know why we do these things.
As we travel down south the sign to Durham takes our fancy. Lets have a look. After queueing for 1/2 an hour we park to the sound of a brass band playing in a square below the car park….
and they were very entertaining if a little repetitive. Moving on up hill towards the Cathedral that we’ve come here to see we experience yet anther brass band who also ended up being extremely entertaining…
to discover that the city has a “Totally Brass” festival happening. Extracted ourselves from all of this entertainment to go further uphill towards the Cathedral and Castle to discover that we were too late to take a castle tour (booked out and the only way you can get into this castle) and that being Sunday there was a service being conducted in the cathedral and tourists were not welcome. However we did manage a guided walking tour of much of the old walled city…
through which we got a complete story of the history of Durham and the cathedral and castle. Engrossing.
Our night stop was near York in a little village to find the above as our hotel for the night. A very pleasant surprise.
On the drive into York proper thenext morning we espied a sign to “Ancient Church”. Interest piqued we offed and sought.
Very austere outside astounding on the inside and over 1000 years old.
York too is an old walled city, much of the wall still existant…
plus it has a massive cathedral and Cliffords tower…
this being an early fortification of the city, before the walls were built. We did not get to the cathedral being a little slow and somewhat cathedralled out but we took a bus tour as we now have managed to do in most places.
A very interesting city in which we’d like to spend more time.