Deb's Digest
Debbie Atkinson’s family life column, as featured in the Southport Visiter.

Wednesday, 2 July 2008

HADRIAN'S WALL


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 Hadrian's Wall


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 me at Hadrian's Wall (we think so anyway - this section could just have been the boundary wall to some old farm judging by the looks we were getting from hiking-types......)


Northumberland has now entered my "favourite places" list. And I'm ashamed of the fact that I'd written it off as a wilderness without ever having visited the place. We've just enjoyed a mini-break at Slaley Hall on the outskirts of Hexham.


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Beautiful weather, fantastic surroundings and delicious food. When I couldn't sleep one night last winter I watched an Open University programme all about Vindolanda - the Roman settlement next to Hadrian's Wall where the oldest surviving writing tablets had been discovered, buried beneath mud and clay.



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The originals are now in the British Museum but facsimiles are in the museum at Vindolanda - and touchingly, one is a birthday invitation from the wife of a Roman soldier, to her friend.


On the way home we passed a field of Alpacas (I want one).


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 and a garden with some beautiful roses



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Our younger son arrived at Dubai, then Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Sandakan (orang utan territory) but that's when communication stopped and by now he should be somewhere else so if I don't get a reply to my texts tomorrow I'm off to who-knows where with Air Asia.

5 comments:

  1. How are you going to find your son if you can't text him to find out whre he is?

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  2. ps how are your knees?

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  3. yes - good point. However it hasn't come to that - yet. He had the good grace to let us know that he was out shopping this afternoon, so I can sleep tonight.

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  4. pps thanks for adding my site to yours - I'll try to reciprocate if I can get the artist son to sort it out for me

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  5. That definitely is part of the Wall that you're standing in front of - you can tell by the stones - it's not like the dry stone walls that mark boundaries. The stones are all even and much bigger.

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