After three weeks of dial-up internet and overall very little contact with the outside world, we’re back in the real world (in this case, London) with broadband, shopping and all the other good stuff that comes with it. Ireland was beautiful and relaxing but three weeks was probably enough idleness.

The reason we came back to London at this date, and indeed the one event around which this whole trip was planned, was a performance of “Waiting for Godot” with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. I don’t know if I’d drive 8000 km again just to see a play but it was definitely worth it in this case. Seeing these two incredible actors work together in such a demanding play (I admit that I didn’t understand everything) was fantastic. Simon Cowell was also part of the cast and was just as over the top as he was in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, colorful waistcoat included!

As has been the norm on this trip, the good weather is following us. Which is very nice but in the case of London means we’ve brought a heat-wave along. Today it’s about 27 C and it’s supposed to go up to 32 C by Friday. Not really the kind of weather you want in a big city especially when there’s no air conditioning on the tube and you get your nose pressed into other people’s armpit at inopportune moments (although is there such as a thing as an opportune moment for an action like that?). In any case, we’ll enjoy city life for a few days before heading further down south to Italy and Spain for the summer.

We’ll keep you posted here where the road takes us next!

I just saw an article on the BBC website about a town in Kent where the Afternoon Club knitted a model of their town. The group has around 40 members and it took them 23 years to finish the project!

Then I remembered a little exhibition we saw at Alnwick Castle which was full of everyday, knitted things. At first we thought it was some sort of modern art exhibition where the artist had put up a bunch of ordinary objects but then we got closer and realized they were all knitted! (I don’t even have the patience to knit a scarf so I am in complete awe of these women…)

An artist's kit

Hand bag and cosmetics

Cake and other food stuff

Trash can

Travelling means you eat out a lot and in Britain that means you spend a lot of time in pubs. Thanks to our Good Pub Guide, that usually means very cozy pubs with tasty food, good beer and lots of senior citizens. (This is something we already noticed in Barcelona – any restaurant full of old people will invariably have good food. And England has only confirmed this theory for us. So that’s the litmus test now: white/grey has to outnumber any other hair color.)

But I digress. Where was I? Right, spending a lot of time in pubs. This isn’t a bad thing but sometimes you do get bored a bit. Which the good people at Guinness obviously know so they came up with riddle beer mats. Entertainment for the whole family! We managed to solve all of them except for the very last one. If anyone can think of the solution for that one, please tell us! (If you can’t be bothered to figure them out, solutions are included in the alt tag – just mouse over the image and hold your mouse still to bring it up.)

Update: The last one had us stumped it was a saying we didn’t know existed. Now the question is where did that saying come from? Maybe it’s the family version of another popular saying. Do saying have an etymologies or just words? On a related note we are also working on getting comments running, so you don’t have to email us all the time.

You might have heard the joke about New Zealand’s population: there are 48 million sheep on the islands, 3 million of them believe they’re human.

I think the UK isn’t too far off either. (Which makes sense, Kiwiland being a colony and all…) It’s lambing season at the moment and Conor has to physically restrain me at times from taking yet another picture of a cute little lamb because there is such a thing as having too many lamb pictures apparently. (Never heard of it…)

I still sneak in a few adorable ones behind his back every once in a while:

The black brothers, fearsome

Hey mum, look! I can RUN!

You'd like to take a picture of me? Really?

How's this position?

Or does my profile look better?

Punk rock ewes!

A rarity only found in Cumbria - the three-headed lamb!

Why yes, I AM the lord of this meadow.

Woops, caught this one taking a crap...

The Romans made it all the way to England during the peak of their empire. This is common knowledge to historians and those who have read the first book of the Falco series by Lindsey Davis. The English took well to the commerce and markets but the highland clans were a different matter. Emperor Hadrian decided to build a wall from coast to coast across England to keep the Scottish Barbarians out and regulate the trade across the frontier. We started our trip along the wall in Carlisle Castle, built at the beginning of the last millennium. Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in the castle for a while, before being taken further south.

From there we made our way to a more religious ruin, the Lanercost Priory. The priory is stunning since its missing roof sections make for some great pictures (the front section is still roofed and serves as a working church).

Finally we headed to the first section of the wall. We learned that it was started in the early second century by Emperor Hadrian and originally extended from Carlisle (then Luguvalium) to Newcastle upon Tyne.

The road ran right alongside the wall and we were a bit disappointed to find it so small and unimpressive. Especially me, who had been talking it up to Nora for days trying to get her ready for our 20 km walk along the wall. Luckily right ahead (the small tower in the above picture) was a museum and the remains of the old roman fort of Birdoswald. The Roman’s built these forts all along the wall, exactly one roman mile apart, to house their soldiers. Most of these mile forts were smaller versions of Birdoswald but many of them are treasure troves for artifacts since approximately 500 Romans lived in each fort. (It takes a large number of soldiers to patrol 117 km of wall 24 hours a day. Around 10,000 in fact.)

Inside the museum they had artifacts and mock-up designs to show what the fort might have looked like while it was in use. Outside some of the bases of the old buildings have been excavated and displayed but if you look carefully at the second photo below you can see the outer wall and east gate of the fort extending further than where the excavations have taken place.

After getting some history and feeling a bit better about coming all this way for a little wall, we headed to our hotel, The Vallum Lodge, located in the national park near the half-way point of the wall’s trajectory in Once Brewed (right next to Twice Brewed, which unsurprisingly has a well-visited pub). The word vallum comes from the “w” shaped ditch in the ground that was built all along the fortification to keep the wall isolated. And here we had finally come to the right place – the wall is much more impressive at this remote middle section because it’s never been dismantled. Closer to towns the wall had been used as a source of pre-cut stone to help in the construction of medieval buildings such as castles and priories. But in this area around Steel Rig and Vindolanda an Englishman called John Clayton bought up a lot of the land in the 1830s to help preserve the wall and discourage the reusing of the stones.

Next morning we started our long walk along the wall. It was a great day and leaving early meant we got a lot of the wall to ourselves.

Of course we got to see a fort every Roman mile, about 1.46 km. This one is number 39 if I remember correctly.

We quickly came upon the famous sycamore gap. Famous thanks to Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves” movie (near the beginning of the movie a kid gets chased by the sheriff of Nottingham and climbs up into the tree). No surprise that this is one of the most sought after photo-ops of the wall. Luckily we got it all to ourselves in the morning. Looking at it in the afternoon on our way back, tourist throngs were pushing each other across the gap from both sides.

The actual border with Scotland is further north nowadays so looking over the wall today you’re just looking at more English.

These guys are all over England so it was no surprise to see them walking the wall path with us.

By the end of the walk we ended at the mile fort of Housesteads (then Vercovicium) to explore another museum. We also ran into some lodgers from our B&B who had taken the easy way here on the tourist bus that loops around the wall sites. Housesteads boosts some impressive foundations, including the raised granary that ventilated the storage and kept vermin away by allowing dogs access underneath the building.

We could have conveniently taken the tourist bus back to the lodge but decided to head north into Barbarian territory and get a look at the wall from a little further away.

The Hadrian’s Wall Path was opened in 2003 and allows you to walk the entire wall. That morning we walked only a small part but it’s probably the most spectacular section of the wall. It might also be the most cared for by national parks and English Heritage; there are signs posted that ask you to not walk the path in winter as it causes damage to the ruins.

The next day we headed to the nearby museum and archeological excavation site Vindolanda. This was one of the larger forts in the area and it was not actually on the wall but a few kilometers south. Vindolanda has more artifacts and a recreation of the wall as it stood originally with a wooden extension at the top making it 10 meters tall. A well-tended museum and guided tour give you great insight into Roman life at the fort. They found a lot of writing tablets here, preserved by the mud and still readable. They offer a rare glimpse at the more mundane but fascinating facts of daily Roman life in the north: gossip, grocery bills, birthday cards. The presence of two large forts so close together leads me to think that the same Roman troops moved from one to the other for some reason (maybe proximity to the wall). Otherwise, it means that the wall was even more manned than we realize and a number of forts along the wall have been lost to time.

Later on Emperor Antoninus Pius built a new wall in the narrower section of Great Britain between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But that wall was quickly abandoned by Marcus Aurelius who fell back to Hadrian’s wall and due to the development of the area less of that wall remains today. In 1987 Hadrian’s wall was deservedly named a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its really worth the visit if you can arrange some nice weather.

You might think that Wainwright would turn in his grave, hearing that we spent a day in the Lake District without walking. But I’d like to imagine that he would have had just as much fun up in the trees as we had.

Yesterday we went on a high wire course through the tree tops of the Grizedale forrest and it was a fantastic experience! Mainly because this is the UK and the litigation-craze is a bit more subdued so they actually let you do the course on your own, without an instructor breathing down your neck at every platform. Of course, for the first 15 min that’s the scariest part but once you’ve clipped yourself on and off a few times, it becomes routine and you start noticing the wilderness around you and the height *gasp* instead.

You start off with a safety introduction where you learn to use your equipment: two safety lines and a pulley, all attached to a sexy harness. Once everyone’s comfortable with the different parts (“Mr. Blue goes through; Red’s first on, last off; ALWAYS STAY ATTACHED”), you’re led to the first stage which isn’t too high yet and where you get to try the different obstacles such as zip line, tarzan swing, ladder and crossing. During this stage, there are a few instructors around, checking that everyone is following the correct procedure when clipping on and off. You go over a few minor crossings, do a mini-tarzan swing and then ride down a zip line wiiiiiiiiiiii! After you’ve landed and picked all the wood-chips out of your underwear, you’re on your own and on to stage 2-6. I won’t go into the details of each stage and obstacle, instead a few visual aids:

Go Ape!

Uhm, handrails anyone?

Incooooommiiiiinnnngg!

The next Spiderman, for sure

The Tarzan swing of death

He made it!

And the good-bye zip:

We hiked up Helvellyn today – the third highest mountain in England! Which sounds impressive until you realize that it’s only 950m high. Caracas lies higher than that. Zuoz lies at almost twice the height. So it might not be the most impressive feat but was chosen over the tallest (983m) on next ridge over for the more exciting tricky ascent.

There are various routes you can take up but of course this being us (Camp Conor anyone?), we chose the hardest one. Incidentally this is also supposed to be the most impressive one in terms of views. I’m saying ’supposed to be’ because we didn’t actually get to see much of the view. More about that later…

The first part you have to reach is Hole-in-the-Wall, the first peak, from which you can see Helvellyn already. This is one of the toughest parts of the climb because it’s very steep and the ‘path’ narrows. You end up going s-l-o-o-o-o-w like a sloth and it feels like you will never reach the top which seems tantalizingly close all the time.

On eventually reaching it, you realize that it wasn’t even that far. It only took us an hour. The Lake District lies at your feet and while you’re gasping for breath you can enjoy the rugged peaks and tranquil lakes around you. Well, you could if there weren’t any clouds. There were clouds. So I’m just assuming this would be the case.

Once you’ve reached Hole-in-the-Wall, you head along Striding Edge towards Helvellyn. The name is a bit misleading because it is an edge alright – very steep precipices on either side – but there’s not much striding because of said precipices. Rather you end up scrambling on all fours and if necessary your butt, trying to find a crack to put your boot into. It’s fun and slightly terrifying at the same time.

Having successfully navigated Striding Edge, there’s only the last small bit left before the peak is yours and sandwiches may be eaten. It’s that last small bit though that almost did me in because there is no real path to climb up the craggy rocks. They DO tell you to please be careful around the edges because erosion has become a problem over the years. But if you don’t know where the edges are, how are you supposed to be careful? We split up at this point, me taking a route on the left side and Conor continuing on the right. My route brought me higher quicker but I also got stuck after about 50 metres with nowhere else to go. Even going down again looked scary. Just my will not to die alongside two strange Scots – who’d foolishly followed me – finally did the trick. I scrambled and slid back down to the spot where we had split and followed Conor on the longer but gentler slope up.

Reaching the plateau at the top was sadly anti-climactic because by now the clouds and fog had become so thick that you couldn’t see anything beyond 20 metres. No sweeping vistas, not even the lake right below us could be coaxed out of its foggy coat. To top it off, there was also a large group of sprightly senior citizens who had taken over the small wind shelter at the peak (they’d come up along an easier approach on the other side of the mountain). But this was no place for niceties and we pushed our way into the sheltered corner of the benches to hide away from the wind for a while.

Food always tastes so much better at the top of a mountain, doesn’t it? Our stale pieces of toast, stolen at breakfast that morning, topped with semi-off cream cheese and dodgy ham from the 7/11 could not have been more delicious. For desert some more Kendal mint cake, our lembas bread, and we were on our way once more. (Incidentally, ‘mint cake’ is a whopping misnomer. There’s no cake whatsoever involved. Just sugar, glucose and peppermint oil. Tasty!)

The way down was uneventful and wet. We had chosen a longer, easier route this time, to go easy on the knees. A few people passed us on their way up but most of them looked like they weren’t going to go much further. Can’t say I blame them with the rain and fog. Although I’ve heard that some folks do this for fun…

Today was our first day of proper English weather – clouds, fog and plenty of rain. But having been here for over a week now, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Mostly for our car’s sake we were hoping for later, say July, because it acts up and does funny things whenever it gets wet from underneath. (Now you’re probably scratching your head and asking “What the hell are you doing there with that car then?” We’re optimists…)

So today despite clouds, fog and rain we were on the road once more. In the morning it wasn’t too bad, just cloudy and damp, which allowed us to enjoy a few hours at the Tamar Otter & Wildlife center. As the name implies, there are lots of otters and other animals to see. Luckily we arrived just before noon when the feeding frenzy began. The otter keeper was very generous with his time, introducing us to each otter and telling us its story. Some of the otters have been handreared and are quite tame (with the keeper at least) so now my camera’s memory card is almost full with otter pictures and videos – don’t worry I won’t post all of them here. But they really are adorable creatures. 

Seriously, who could say no to these guys?

The center also has a whole colony of wallabies (a mob of wallabies) which seem to be quite happy there despite the weather. We learned later though that Wallabies are found especially in wooded areas of Australia, such as Tasmania, so the Cornish weather isn’t too much of a stretch for them. 

Mama Wallaby with Joey Tribbiani

As we left the otters, it started drizzling but we decided to head to Polperro nevertheless. It’s a former smugglers’ haven on the south Cornwall coast and according to the polperro.org website, ‘everyone’s idea of a picturesque Cornish fishing village’. How could we miss that? By the time we had found our way there – lots of muddy narrow country lanes later – it wasn’t drizzling anymore but pouring buckets. So out came the big jackets and our tiny but trusty umbrella and we took a quick slosh around the harbour and cliffs before repairing to the Blue Peter for some drinks. (Girls – if you ever go there, make sure you check out the bathroom!)

In quite a few of the cathedrals and abbeys we’ve gone to, we noticed rather modern and funky looking stained-glass windows, like the ones above from Winchester cathedral.

We assumed the windows had been blown out during the war from the bombings and when it came to rebuilding, the churches decided to forgo their saints and sinners in favor of some abstract art. But then we learned that it was in fact a much earlier war that had destroyed the windows, the British Civil War (1640s), when parliamentary troops went around and threw rocks at church and cathedral windows. (They had a beef with the church apparently…) After the war was over, instead of re-building the windows from scratch many churches simply assembled the broken pieces back into the windows with no pattern or plan. Voilà – modern masterpieces!

Notice the one intact panel smack in the middle of the top middle window?