North

It is early morning here and we have just come back from a week of touring "The North". Yes, on all of the road signs, it is simply labeled THE NORTH. We stayed in a border town called Carlisle..right on the border with Scotland and saw many Roman forts and hiked Hadrian's wall. For those, like me, who didn't know what this was, he was a Roman Emperor who fortified Britain's borders with "the wild country"..Scotland...by building a 73 mile, 12 ft high, 4 ft thick stone wall across the entire countryside. It is massive and impressive and you can pretty much hike the whole thing. We didn't hike all 73 miles, but got some pretty decent walks on it, over it, and through it. You meet some amazing people along the way for whom this is clearly a goal and are walking at speed to make the whole thing. Gorgeous views, weather and fun digging around old Roman Forts. At one stop(Vindalando) we got to meet with the head archeologist(in year 9 of his doctorate from Duke) who had a team out working the site. He gave this amazing history lesson of who had lived here(6 different forts over the years) and what they had done. It has the oldest collection of written works in Britain. With hand scribed party invitations, garrison lists, business dealings, even school lessons with teacher's corrections! A pretty cool glimpse into the past.
We took in Edinburgh at the start of its Fringe Festival, which is a big music, art, performance extravaganza with street performances everywhere of everything you can imagine and then some. I'm told at night it is even more wild! We went to Alnwick Castle where the first several Harry Potter films were made and had lots of fun pretending. We hiked the Lake District from the town of Keswick. It was so wild to walk through town and EVERYONE, even infants, are wearing hiking boots! The hike was spectacular up and over mountains, looking down at the lakes and finally walking the lake shore back to town.

As we left our cabin we headed to York, but first stopped in the North Moors National Park, where 3/4 of the world's heather moors are grown. This was so obscure in the guide book, I felt I must see it. So you cruise along through farm country...counting cows and such...and suddenly you turn right and there are acres and acres of rolling hills that are all purple!! Just covered in heather. So we stopped in a local bakery for some sandwiches and hiked away up the mountains. We ended up eating lunch on the rock rubble of an old Bronze Age house/hovel/shelter. We made it to York in time to wander this medieval city with winding roads and over-hanging buildings. We climbed the 277 steps to the top of York Minster(the Cathedral) and then when down into the crypts where you see that this massive building is built on the remains of both a Roman and Norman site. Every 500 years or so, you can see where things settled, got filled over with rock and started building again! I am glad I saw this AFTER I had climbed up to the top. After a relaxing dinner, we went on the Ghost Hunt of York, where you wander the streets with a story-teller and look for ghosts . All good fun.

We are now home and just slept our last night in the Cromford Way house. We move the last of the furniture to the new various owners tonight and pack our things and move into friends' house while the cleaners come through tomorrow. We have just a couple of days for our last minute sight-seeing, but it is funny as we talk about what we want to do...no one has any ideas. that is a good thing, we worked our way through the guide books and pretty much have seen it all! It must be time to come home.