Wednesday June 6

6/6/07 Day Fourteen. Wednesday.

Oh my it hurt to get up this morning after staying up so late with Gretchen and Hannah. But get up we did, all of us ready on time for our 7:45 cab ride to the train station. Derek was cheerful and chatty as usual, and we arranged to give him a call when we were on our train coming home and he would come and retrieve us, too.

Our 8:12 train to Newcastle arrived on time, and we were in that lovely city before we had even got settled. From the train station it was a short walk to the bus stop where we picked up our guided tour bus for the Roman Wall.

There were many points of interest, and I'm sure Gretchen has blogged most of the events of the day, so I'll just kind of concentrate on one thing that kept me pondering most of the day.

The guide was talking about a point in history in which the English and the Scottish were almost constantly having little skirmishes and raids along the borderlands. These were called the Reaver Wars. (A reaver, I found out at another museum, is an assistant to the king). So anyway, the people trying to live in the border lands were often getting their animals confiscated, or their homes looted, or even getting themselves killed because of these little skirmishes, and that became known as "being reaved". Our modern word "bereaved" comes from that, meaning "to have a loss".

I find it fascinating to be in an area where almost every building, every street, every hill, and almost every name have some historical story behind them. I wonder what it would be like to grow up in an environment like this, so aware of the history surrounding you. Would one feel much more connected to a place and those around you? Would one feel more sure of themselves, knowing their place in the long tide of history? I just don't know.

Anyway, the tour was fascinating, and we jumped off the bus at Housesteads Fort and took a look around. Oh. My. God. These ruin things are not easy to get to, I'm telling ya. To get to this one from the car park, you have to walk up a windy path up this absolutely HUGE hill. It's probably at least 1/2 mile of hard walking straight up before you get there. I am amazed more people don't just keel over from the strain of it. If you do it, though, you are rewarded. The ruins are wonderful, and we wandered around there for a couple of hours at least, I think. Terry really wanted to walk along the wall, so he did so while we girls took pictures of him. We probably would have stayed longer on a nicer day, but it was quite chilly, and it didn't take too long for us all to decide we'd had enough. Back down that bitch of a hill, we went, and got another tour bus to take us back to Hexham. We couldn't catch one all the way back to Newcastle at that time, so we just went as far as they went then, which was Hexham, and then we caught a train back to Newcastle. From the train station we hopped over to the subway station, and got on that for Cullercoats, which was our stop to get to the aquarium.

The sign at the Cullercoats station said "Just turn left and 5 minutes to the aquarium", but that was a just plain lie. It's at least a mile to the aquarium, so I don't think anyone but a track star could do it in 5 minutes. It's a pretty walk, though, stretching along the waterfront. If it had been warmer, and if we had had more time, I would have liked to explore the beaches some more. As it was, we were short on time, though, so we headed straight for the aquarium.

The aquarium was small, but nice. I think we all enjoyed it. At the very least, we all enjoyed being inside a warm building for a couple of hours. It was close to closing time when we decided it was time to make the trek back to the station.

Subway back to Newcastle train station, then as luck would have it, a train heading back to Alnmouth was there within just a few minutes. Other than a weird drunk behind me, which I'm sure Gretchen told you all about, the ride was fairly uneventful. Derek, the absolutely best taxi driver in the universe picked us up at the station and brought us in to town. We had him drop us at The Oaks, which is just about a 15 minute walk from the cottage, so we could get a bit of supper before going home.

The Oaks was warm and toasty, and their ale was tasty. The potato leek soup was fantastic. I don't actually remember what else I had. Something involving chicken and stuffing, I think. We were so tired by that time, I think the warmth and the ale got to us, and we all just bumbled through our supper. We all were dreading the walk home, too. We had walked so much all day, we just didn't have it in us to go any more, so I called Derek again, and he hopped over in no time at all to take us home. Bless his heart, he didn't even charge us for that one. I tell you. Amazing.

Needless to say, it was early to bed for all of us. We came into a cold house, and we talked about how someone should light a fire. That conversation lasted about a minute and a half, all of us realizing that no matter how cold the house was, our beds were cozy and warm. We all just climbed into bed, instead. I think I might have broken a personal record as to how fast I was asleep that night.