Hadrian’s Wall – Lynn's Travel Adventures

Our main objective today was to visit Hadrian’s Wall. On our way we stopped at the Garden of Remembrance in Lockerbie cemetery which is where the memorial is for the victims of Pan Am flight 103 is located. Flight 103 exploded over this small Scottish town on December 21, 1988 due to a terrorist bomb planted in a piece of luggage. In total, 270 people were killed included 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground. The latter were killed when a wing section hit a house and exploded.

Garden of Remembrance, Lockerbie Scotland

In addition to the main memorial, there were individual tributes.

These individual tributes were embedded into the walls on both sides of the main memorial as well as scattered around the garden.

There was a also a row of trees that had name plaques of additional victims of the disaster.

You can just barely see the small plaques at the base of each tree. The plaques have the names and dates of birth/death for other victims.

It really was a beautiful memorial and we’re so glad we went. It was only about 5 minutes off our intended route and well worth the time.

After the cemetery, we were on our way to Hadrian’s Wall. It runs 73 miles along the width of northern England, just south of the Scottish border and marked the northern most border of the Roman Empire. Building started in 122AD (exactly 1900 years ago) and took 6 years to build.

The dark red line is Hadrian’s Wall while the dotted line running at a diagonal above it is the modern England/Scottish border.

The first part we saw was the remains of a Watch Tower which were placed about every mile along the wall.

English countryside around the Wall. It’s much greener up here than it was in the south.

Then it was on to the next major stop, the Birdoswald Roman Fort, one of the best preserved forts along the wall.

Short piece of the wall to the outside of the fort.

Then it was on to the Roman Army Museum. It’s a small museum but had some nice exhibits and artifacts.

This is an actual skull of bull ox that, after all other parts had been used for food, clothing and weapons, had been mounted on a pole and used for target practice. The small holes at the top of the skull are bolt holes from the weapons.

Here’s me trying my best to be an archer. I did okay with two hands but then someone would need to hold the bow so I could pull back the string.

After a lovely lunch where we had a long chat with a Scottish gentleman, we found a part of the wall that was only a 2-minute walk from the car park.

If you look closely at the hills in the distance, you can see the wall along the top. It was too long of a walk with lots of stairs up the cliff to get any closer.

We’re spending the night in Sunderland and tomorrow we head south to York for 3 nights. We weren’t sure if we were going to make it down there as it was either York or the Lake District. But given the cloudy, rainy weather we decided to head for York instead. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful city and I can’t wait to see it.

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