June 6th - Newcastle and thereabouts.
We somehow managed to leave the house at 7:45 in time for Derek (the most wonderful taxi driver in the whole world and honorary member of our team) to take us to the train. So yesterday was filled with the joys of public transportation.

We managed to make it to Newcastle, find the AD122 bus that drives along Hadrians wall and get aboard without incident. There is only one morning bus at 9:00 am so it was important that we make that one. I thought the bus was great. The driver introduced our guide as Rob who then
informed us his name was actually Keith. I'm still not sure who he was but
who cares right?

We toured along the wall out to Housesteads Fort which was well worth the effort for the trip. There are several sections of the wall in ruins that
you can still see while on the way out of the city. The bus drove along the
route of the wall and once we were well out of the city you can still see
the huge ditches they constructed on either side of the wall to make life
more difficult for those wanting to cross it. They had a fancy name
"vallum" (maybe 1 L) for the ditch on the Roman side but the ditch on the
barbarian side was just called the ditch. We forgot to ask why. Perhaps
they felt the barbians didn't deserve a name for their ditch. But several
times we glimpsed portions of the wall still standing in some form or other.

In places the road was built over the wall itself. During the war between
the Scots and the English The military general Wade ordered a road built to
haul supplies and that's where they put it. It apparently made an excellent
foundation for the roadway. I think they called it the military road.

Many of the houses, churches and towers constructed along the way were made of the stone from the wall. The guide pointed out several with their
distinctive rectangular stones (I never saw any other kind so ...). The bus
travelled through a number of picturesque towns and paused to push his
hometown in particular. Later he pointed out another town and a
pub/restaurant/hotel there punctuated with "apparently" when referring to
it's quality. He was evidently English and several times made disparaging
comments (in jest of course...hmmm...) about his Scottish neighbors to the
north. We stopped briefly at Hexam (which was prophetic as it turned out) and experienced yet another English loo. They have the single little squares of toilet paper there just like in the states.

We stumbled along trying to figure out where we wanted off the bus until
that point and then decided that Housesteads fort was the place. At
Housesteads we hopped off and grabbed strange sandwiches (Meg and I had ham salad which was sliced ham with salad on top, Hannah had spicy chicken which was chicken salad) and a cup of coffee before heading up the hill. The operative word here is up. They could have put in stairs. We managed the quarter to half mile walk up the hill to the museum and the site of the ruins. It was a roman fort built up against the wall at the top of the hill. We could certainly see why it was built up there. You could see for miles. It's just inside the Northumbria National Park.

The ruin is basically a small city. There were several structures which had
raised floors presumably for heating. There is evidence of plumbing with
troughs covered over with stones that allowed the detrius to flow downhill. The latrines were still in good shape and you could see the washtub where laundry was presumably washed beside it. There were remains of columns still standing and it really was impressive. At the top of the hill was Hadrians wall. It ran along the ridge and then down to the field below. Not only for defense, the Romans used it for collecting tolls and controlling commerce for those who would travel across.
Meg and Terry will probably go into some detail and I have about two hundred photographs from the wall which will hopefully get posted (not all of them mind you) once we get to a town with some REAL internet. Once we were satisfied that we had absorbed the quiet ambience of the place and had documented each stone we headed back down the hill and waited for a bus to take us back to Newcastle. The plan was to visit an aquarium in Tyneside in the afternoon.

We successfully hopped a bus back to Hexam where Meg posted a brief blog entry from an internet "phone" booth and then we all hopped on the next train back to Newcastle. Once there we stopped in the Burger King for a quick lunch where "Have it your way" means something more like "You'll get whatever I decide to give you - and no arguments about it". Regardless we were happy for a very quick lunch of something we didn't have to look underneath and examine carefully for it's cultural significance before eating.

Finding and then boarding the Metro (subway) was relatively uneventful and we made our way among the school children in their monogrammed school sweatshirts out to Cullercoats stop where we walked for about 15 minutes (not the 5 minutes promised in the literature) to the Blue Reef aquarium. I think it wasn't as big as Hannah had hoped but it was a fun outing. I especially liked the sea otters - there were about six of them - and the sea horses a whole stable full. Hannah wanted to cuddle with the seals but I thought they were looking at me like maybe I'd be tasty. They also had an octopus there. He was awesome, very actively sliding along the glass like the gelatinous slithering thing that he was. Meg and I discussed the image of having to pull him off of your face (yours, not ours mind you). Though Meg thought he could give a heck of a sinus massage...
Once we were through the aquarium we headed back all the time wondering if we'd really be able to figure out how to get on the correct train and make it back to Alnwick without becoming stranded. The train tables aren't exactly the most intuitive. We somehow managed after a subway ride, bumbling around the station trying to figure out why the train at platform 2 wasn't going to where we thought it should be going (our train wasn't in yet, that's why) and once the correct train did arrive we boarded, everyone still had their tickets and we sat at a table all four of us together.

Feeling splendidly pleased with our transport navigation abilities things
were looking up until this nice older man climbed into the seat behind Meg. He proceeded to ask if the train was going south to which Meg replied, uh no, it's going north. He sat back in the seat wrestled with a quart of lager trying to get the lid off on the hook holding the tray table in place. Coughing just like the audio narration at the castle (see I finally came back to that) and making us just sure he was going to hurl his lunch through the split between the seats all over Meg's new purse - good thing that's weatherproof - he finally tried to hand Meg his beer and said "Open that". Meg declined, informing him she didn't know how (snort). We're rolling by this time so we are just sure we'll be dealing with him all the way to Alnmouth. He once again asked if we were going south to which Meg informed him "No, still going north".
Before anything else happened Meg made emphatic eye motions to the two cops that had climbed on board before we left and they escorted the old guy to the area between the cars so that we were no longer threatened by his
swinging the beer bottle trying to open it.

He spent the rest of his journey alternately falling down, crying and trying to find out of the train was going south or not in the presence of the two officers. They put him off at Alnmouth since he didn't have a ticket and he's presumably still wandering around Alnmouth trying to find a train south.

We were picked up by our wonderful taxi driver Derek and he proceeded to
deliver us to the Oaks hotel for dinner, after driving us by the Vauxhall
dealer and providing introduction so that we can rent a car to go to Lindesfarne and the Cheviot Hills over the next two days.

It was another wonderful dinner though Terry's steak was creamated. Medium well? - He must have been really tired when he ordered. Meg and I had a chicken and pasta dish that had a wonderful stuffing under the skin and morel mushrooms in the sauce. Hannah had scampi which here apparently means any shrimp breaded and deep fried.

We drank a couple of real ales and debated the wisdom of trying to walk the mile back to the cottage finally giving in, letting Hannah take the blame
and calling Derek to come get us. Meg obsessed about it for awhile feeling
guilty about calling him again but finally gave in and called. She tried to
fake that it wasn't us by just telling the woman who answered that we'd like to call a cab. The woman replied "At the oaks are ye? Four of ye?" Meg laughed and admitted that in fact it was us and we finished our ales then waited outside for the cab. Hannah took the blame and accomodated us by laying down on the wall so that when Derek pulled up we looked appropriately exhausted. He didn't charge us for the ride home - Did we say how much we really like him? He reminds me of someone, maybe one of the Blumenthal boys - Eric? I don't know. We hope to get a picture of him and will promote his services to the best of our abilities. He's really a wonderful guy. It doesn't suck being driven around in a Mercedes either.
Exhausted - really, everyone went straight to bed. Well almost, I needed to
do laundry but wasn't able to stay awake through the wash cycle and finally
gave up about 10:30 and went to bed.

So now here we are on Thursday morning, laundry is clanking in the dryer
like it's full of spoons. I've been cleaning out the lint trap every five
minutes having accidentally left a package of kleenex in the pocket of a
jacket I'm washing. It's cold and grey out, the hills across the road
generally obscured by the low clouds and mist. The last two days have been increasingly worse on that count pretty much ruling out Lindesfarne for today since I don't think we'd be able to see it. We may still try for that
tomorrow and if we ever get rolling today we may get to the Cheviots.
I'm looking forward to leaving Saturday and heading to Edinburgh as we have pretty much exhausted our Alnwick experience. There hasn't been a single bar fight. We thought about fighting amongst ourselves just to make sure we got the full Alnwick experience but that seems like an awful lot of effort.

Come to think of it one of the bartenders at the Oaks did kind of have a
black eye....