Rosslyn & Hadrians Wall

Like I had said earlier the sun had come out so we stopped at Rosslyn Chapel and explored the area a bit. Recently popularized by Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code', Rosslyn was the scene of some Knight's Templar activity back in the day. The medival architecture and cabalistic detail of the interior was neat, unfortunately, it was being reconstructed or preserved or something and the entire outside was covered in scaffolding so I left without a solid pciture (mental or otherwise) of what Roasslyn, the building, actually looks like.

We poked around here for a bit, snapped some photos and decided to hike across the hillside in the direction of the Rosslyn Castle ruins we spied in the distance. Feeling adventurous we decided to take the road less travelled and hike along an animal path (sheep most likely). So after about a half hour of slipping and sliding along the muddy hillside we came upon the ruins. Helen and Ginger were the first to discover the remains as Steve and I were off busily chasing butterflies or digging up ferns.

Only after circumnavigating the remains did we realize the up top was actually a house that was being lived in and a nice gravel paved road leading back towards Rosslyn..given a second chance though I think we'd still have chosen our path.

Anyway, having spent a couple of hours enjoying the sun we got back in the car and get out of this barbarian land, or so the Romans called Scotland. We were making our way south, heading towards Carlisle just north of the Lake District and we realized that along the way we were going to be heading past Hadrians wall, the northernmost border of the Roman empire, so we decided to swing by and a peak.

Hadrian's wall marked the northernmost border of the Roman empire. Emperor Hadrian commissioned the wall to be build in ~122AD to keep the northern barbarian tribes out (a.k.a. the Scots and the Picts). What's impressive about Hadrian's wall is not it's size or its girth (no laughing ladies) although it is about 60 miles long and was some 15 feet high in places with assorted forts and turrets placed along the way. What is impressive is that in ~122 AD when pretty much everyone else in the world is making walls out of wood, mud, or by stacking stones the Romans had mastered concrete..and I'm not talking about some crappy early precursor either, but a real modern, waterproof concrete. Apparently they had figured out a way to use the volcanic ash from Mt. Etna mixed with lye to make everything set nicely. On top of this, what's equally or more impressive is that the Romans had apparently imported I don't know how many tons of this volcanic ash all the way from Italy to Northern England to build this wall. The logistics of it alone are impressive.

ps: if you're still giggling over the 'size and girth' comment from above I guess you could say that what Hadrian's wall lacks in size it makes up for in technique. ;P