You Can Run…

…But you can’t hide. Not strictly, true, you can run, but you can’t hide your legs (one million internets to anyone who gets this reference*).

Avid readers of this blog (I continue to believe in these mythical creatures) will have noticed that I haven’t posted for a couple of days. This is mostly because we haven’t done much. And the reason we haven’t done much is that The Covids (official spelling if you’re over 50) may have finally caught up with us. We’re not dead, we’re resting (easier reference for you there). Actually we don’t know for sure, or if it’s or just a cold, but the circumstantial evidence is, if not overwhelming (neither of us have lost senses of smell or taste), at least in favour of it.

 We arrived at Edinburgh Airport on Wednesday, and were given a much more sensible car by Alamo Rent-A-Car – a Hyundai Tucson. We drove south, feeling increasingly worse for wear. Nevertheless, we stopped off according to plan at Alnwick Castle, seat of the Lords, then Earls, then Dukes of Northumberland, aka the Percys. As dukes, they’re a bit of a johnny-come-lately, only having had the first dukedom in 1766. The castle is very castle-y, and was used as a set for some parts of the Potter franchise. This is unfortunate, as they do seem to base an awful lot of their content, and half of the shop, around this. We’d got there quite late in the day, having stopped at a random pub en route for lunch, and were advised to visit the state rooms first, as last entry to those is at 4:00pm. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to take pictures of the interior (and there’s a sharp-eyed guide in each room to enforce this), but it was all very beautiful, and is still used in the winter as the family’s residence. There was also archery practice in the castle, but again last bow-off (technical term) was at 4:00pm, so we missed that. After touring the outside wall, we checked out the Duke’s carriage, and then completed the final leg of our journey to Jarrow, inevitably via Waitrose.

Alnwick Castle

The carriage

The following day we didn’t feel much like going out anywhere. A quick trip to Morrisons to get some much-needed drugs was about it.

On Friday, after a day’s rest, we felt slightly more human, so decided to head to Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort. This site is the remains of the Roman fort built at the mouth of the River Tyne (the local topography has changed a little since then, but it’s still on the Tyne). The fort supplied the garrisons on Hadrian’s Wall, but was not part of the wall itself – that ends on the other side of the river. As seems to be the case with many of the Roman sites we’ve visited, it was firstly burned to the ground, plundered for stone, and then buried and forgotten. In the 19^th century it was rediscovered when the land was being developed for housing, and part of it was left as a public amenity. In the 1970s the housing which had been built on the rest of the site was demolished, and the whole place opened up and further excavations made. At the same time, some bits were reconstructed – the West Gate, Commander’s House and barracks. The name derives from the fact that it was garrisoned by a squadron of boatmen from Mesopotamia, and means “fort of the Arab troops”. After being used as a granary in its original formation, it was later used by emperor Septimius Severus as the base for his invasion of Scotland. 

Reconstructed West Gate

The Commander's Bedroom

The reconstruction has been painted to look like how it would have been in Roman times

The site is still surrounded by housing on all sides, which is a bit bizarre. I wondered where Sattie was taking us when we were driving there, as we were going along urban terraced streets, then suddenly, there's Roman ruins in the middle of the street.

On the way home, Sattie tried to get us lost by sending us the wrong way down a street on a non-existent roundabout, but we eventually found an alternate route and Sattie found where we were. But she was in the huff for the rest of the journey.

* Here's the answer: