Hadrian's Wall

Every year John and his friends (collectively known as The Groovy Gang) have a weekend away wreaking havoc in some European city. I don't mind him going, but I'd like it if he put as much effort into a weekend away with me as he does with his mates. I can't remember the last time we went somewhere just the two of us, and I mentioned this to him about 6 weeks ago. He asked me where I'd like to go. I said Italy.

So he booked us into a bed and breakfast on an organic farm in Northumberland National Park.

His reasons for this were really sensible. Lots of people go on vacation at Easter because the kids are off school for two weeks, so the price of flights and hotels goes up. Since we like hiking and being outdoors (and we all know my love of highland cows), an organic farm seemed like a good idea. It was.

We left on Thursday afternoon for Newcastle, to spend the night with John's niece and her boyfriend. We went out for drinks and a nice dinner, and on Friday morning, after dropping Leanne off in the city center for work, we set off for Bardon Mill and the farm. We visited this area of England only in passing many years ago on our way to a weekend in Edinburgh, long before we had kids, so it was like we'd never been there before.

I should have been a history teacher.

We spent most of our time walking along Hadrian's Wall. What an amazing piece of engineering. How did they do it? I was so impressed by it, that I'd stand and just look at it for long periods of time - well, I also stood still alot because I was stuck in either mud or sheep poop or both, or out of breath from climbing all the hills. When we weren't walking along the wall, we were visiting Roman forts built along it. We visited three which were closest to us - Vindolanda, Housesteads and Chesters. We also spent alot of time in the evenings at the Twice Brewed Inn, which had their own fabulous ale and the best sticky toffee pudding I have ever tasted.

If you've got 10 minutes of your life that you're not bothered about getting back, you can see the slideshow of our weekend - don't worry, it's clean except for some mud. There's also a video, which isn't so clean because I'm having a little rant and sharing my real feelings about (a) being stuck in sheep poop and (b) my husband videotaping it. So if the kids are around, turn the volume down.