August 12+13 Once Brewed

Preface:  The Inn here is called Twice Brewed.  It is in a place called Once Brewed, only there is nothing here but the Inn. It is all rather confusing.  The story is that long ago, lost to the dawn of time, someone of importance stayed here and complained about the ale, so they brewed it again.

Here are the bare essentials one needs to know about the wall.  Why this plaque was placed at the Temple of Mithras (see just below), is not clear:

Now, this is an awfully small footprint for a temple to a deity.  After you have an altar and a bull and so on, where is the room for all those Roman soldier worshippers?

No doubt the soldiers who constructed this wall frequently worked in the rain, so this is how the day would have looked to them:

The sameness of the size and shape of the stones is remarkable. But, I did learn subsequently that parts of the wall were first constructed of turf and then wood and when it was all stone.....who knows?  But what I would like to know is how the stones were schlepped there and whence they came.  (Same question regarding castles, cathedrals, forts and so on.)

Sometimes there is no wall, it having fallen into disrepair and its stones looted, perhaps for other projects, but there is a ditch:

And there is the occasional surprise, like this lake:

In places, the wall twists and, from a distance, looks graceful:

Sometimes is goes straight up and when it does, so do you:

I was not thrilled that I had scheduled a rest day to see some of the highly touted sites like Vindolanda, but had I not gone, I would have agonised over what I had missed.  So I obediently went off to Vindolanda, which, if you are going to visit one archeological site, is the one not to miss as it is large, has a decent museum, and the setting is lovely.



Imagined face guard for horse:

Actual remnant:

My favourite display was the shoes:

How advanced was this? Some soles even had a tread!

And there were little kiddie shoes:

And a whole display of shoes that is set up just like at REI!!

Then off to the Roman Military Museum from which I really expected to emerge an expert in all things militarily Roman.  They had a 3D movie, mostly of the wall, so it was fun to see, in 3D, where I had walked.  Then I learned, or was reminded, that after 25 years of service, an auxiliary—a (conquered) foreigner compelled to serve the empire—could become a citizen and have a wife and a plot of land that his children (?) could inherit.  Great perk except the likelihood of a soldier surviving 25 years was, shall we say, slim.  The museum was small: 90% hype, 10 % substance.

Oh, I did learn about boxing.  This is what I learned: "Ancient boxing was a straightforward fight between two opponents regardless of weight and without bouts or breaks.  The winner either knocked out his opponent or forced him to yield.

Sculptures showing the earliest boxers, from Mesopotamia and Egypt, suggest that bare fist fighting took place but through time the appearance of simple 'gloves' started to appear which were designed to protect the knuckles but also inflict damage on the opponent.

The Romans took the sport to a new and more lethal level by incorporating metal blades and inserts into the cutting edge of the gloves."

 A mosaic depicting the famous match between Entellus and Dares of Virgil's Aeneid:

After the Military Museum I walked to Haltwhistle—yes, the train does stop there!—where there is a CoOp in order to buy supplies for dinner tonight and tomorrow. That three mile walk was the best part of the day!