DAY TWELVE: HADRIAN'S WALL, ETC.

Coming at you Bud Smith-style, typing with my thumbs into my iPhone from the back of a moving bus - yes, today’s crammed schedule doesn’t really leave time for noodling around on a laptop and Robbie, our driver, just told us that the next 40 minutes would be “good to chill and maybe nap a bit if you wish.”  Or write a blog post.

I already napped. In fact, I’ve been napping on and off all day, pretty much every  during part of every leg of our 10.5-hour tour. Put me in a luxurious 16-seat Mercedes bus, fill it with a pair of Sandra Bullocks, a family from North Carolina, some Russians, a pair of Germans, a family from Beijing and Mr. Park from South Korea, who got called out immediately and asked to ride shotgun not because he was wearing a Beatles sweatshirt but because he’s traveling alone, turn on the relaxing Scottish music and I’m head bobbing within five minutes. 

Which isn’t ideal because today’s trip, which took us south from Edinburgh to the disputed border towns (disputed, like, 800 years ago but fiery, bloody disputes that even the controversial Mary, Queen of Scots, couldn’t solve - and eventually lost her head over — leaving them battered and dented for generations), then onto the ruins of a Roman fort and then the awe-inspiring Hadrian’s Wall, included some eye-popping scenery, visible from the bus if you are not asleep. Or so I’m told. 

Or maybe it was ideal because we’ve been on this bus since 8:15 and we don’t get back until 6:30. That’s 10 hours-plus, even if you use the metric system, and honestly leaves plenty of time for a series of naps and blog posts.

Moffat home girls.

Right now we’re on our way to Moffat, which just turns out to be the ancestral home of S. Bullock, Sr. (and Junior, I guess). Both Bullocks have planned a trip there scheduled for Monday  with their own driver and minus Mr. Park,  but today gives them an unexpected little preview. The trip to Moffat is actually the primary focus of Sr.’s trip to Scotland, to reclaim her roots and all,  but when I asked them yesterday what they had planned for their solo Moffat trip (to see if I should go or graciously give way to a mother-daughter quality time trip), Jr. said, “Probably do some shopping.”  As one does in their ancestral home. Tartans and all. 

Today was my gig, as I am enthralled by Hadrian’s Wall, and even the name Hadrian, but I think the highlight of the trip came before the stop at the actual wall (which one should NOT walk on, even if you don’t see the sign until after you’ve seen everyone else from the bus - even Mr. Park - climb on up like it’s a scheduled part of the tour and followed them up there). After 45 minutes walking around Jedburgh, where the local abbey, once mighty and influential, had become ruins and where Mary, Queen of Scots, once hid out in a local house after falling from her horse, where you can tour a 19th-century prison for free and use the toilet without ponying up 30 pence and where a seemingly workaday coffee shop can unexpectedly deliver the Best Cheese Scone in Scotland, we stopped briefly at the border to take pictures of ourselves standing in front of a huge rock with “England” written across it but NOT alongside a guy in full Scottish “kit” playing the bagpipes and selling souvenirs out

We have a piper down.

of his car. “That’s the Scottish anthem,” I heard Driver Robbie tell one of my fellow travelers who was not Mr. Park. 

“That’s the national anthem?” the traveler asked. 

“God Save the Queen is the national anthem,” Robbie answered, “but you’ll never hear a Scot singing it.”

800 years later, the bad feelings are subtle and don’t require conquest, but they’re not entirely gone. Taxes. 

But for anyone unfamiliar with British history (like me, despite having actually taught British Lit for three years at a reputable high school in Seattle), our next stop, at Vindolanda, was worth the entire trip.

Hang on. Robbie’s eclectic playlist just flipped over to Tom Waits. I’ll be back once “Old ‘55” ends to fill you in on ancient British history. And maybe literature, if you’re lucky. Or not lucky. I’m pretty sure the kids who sat through me teaching Beowulf didn’t feel lucky. Sorry, Sir Walter Scott. 

Okay, back to Vindolanda, which is the ruins of a fort and adjacent town built by the conquering Romans in the first century A.D.  If you have two hours there, like we did, you can learn about Rome’s 400-year occupation of the British Isles and their very effective M.O. of coming in, conquering, and taking everyone left over (that is anyone not killed, a child or a woman) and conscripting them into the Roman army, then sending them to build a fort and rule over what’s left of the local populace in some far-off land - like Northern England. 

One more break. Robbie’s playing Bowie’s “Sound and Vision.”  Probably my favorite Bowie song. Under different circumstances, Robbie and I could have a nice conversation about pop music.  I should ask him what he thinks of the Red Hot Chilli Pipers. 

Evidence of Romans acting badly.

Back to the Romans. Vindolanda, which was actually founded before Hadrian built his wall, has enough intact ruins to make it easy to imagine life in the fort and in the village outside its walls. Both seem like a better lot than the one endured by our friends back at the Croft House in Shetland. 

Vindolanda also has a nice museum full of artifacts dug up by cheerful volunteers of all ages, according to the video playing continuously in the auditorium. Watching retirees happily brush dirt off of rocks had me inspired; perhaps Sandra Bullock and I can spend our retirement digging up artifacts, wearing bucket hats and Keene shoes, kneeling side-by-side and doing out part for history. 

If there is any history, I mean. One uneasy idea that stuck to me while perusing Roman pottery, tools, coins and shoes (so many shoes. Sandals, mostly) was that I wonder if future generations will have any American artifacts to peruse, or if we’ll have destroyed them because they offended someone in 2019.  History is messy.  If you think these Romans (or the Vikings, or anyone else living back then) didn’t kill people for sport, enslave them or basically live in a class-stratified, cruel, conquest-thirsty empire, you need to read more history and then visit Vindolanda, which will resonate like a cuff in the head.  Excellent sandals, though. 

Looks like we’re nearing Moffat. Robbie just said “the clan Moffat we’re big landowners around here.” Sandra Bullock responded with a fist pump. 

After Vindolanda we finally did stop at Hadrian’s wall.  Unlike the hapless enemies of 2nd-century Rome, we (illegally) scaled the wall with ease. But remember, the wall is a shadow of its former self. It’s stones have been pirated to make fences, buildings, and most

A little respect, please.

egregiously, to make the foundation of the road we’ve been driving on for the past half-hour. It’s still imposing, though, traveling 73 miles from coast to coast through the bucolic and now peaceful English countryside.  Not imposing enough, though, to stop a little kid with plastic swords and a Roman helmet from charging across it while we there. “I guess it didn’t keep all the invaders out,” I quipped as he ran past. 

“Bloody Romans,” his father said. 

But it’s not so much the present-day condition of the wall that’s obsession-worthy as it is the idea of the wall itself, of a wall that stretches out for miles and is 2,000 years old, even if segments are now casually used by farmers to keep their sheep from escaping. 

If you’re up for it and plan better than me, you can actually hike the length of Hadrian’s Wall. We saw them all day from our bus (when we weren’t  dozing), striding along with their packs, and every time I thought the same thing: “They’re doing it. We’re just watching.”

Real time update: we just met George, the Singing Potter, in his over-crammed shop. He overshared and offered us a tract about the coming rapture. “You hear all this bad stuff, but the good news is coming sooner than you think,” he said after telling us his entire tragic but exhilarating life story. Both S. Bullocks blew out of there, leaving one overly polite Jew behind to absorb the rest of the Singing Potter’s tale about the time he sung in San Francisco.  There was a compelling story in there somewhere, I’m pretty sure, but it was buried under a mountain of words. Also, his pottery wasn’t that great.  

We’re loaded back up in our luxurious bus, ready to travel the last hour back to Edinburgh. Robbie and I briefly discussed music. He claims to dislike the Tom Waits music where he bangs pots and pans and growls as much as I do but I think he was indulging me. He is in the service industry after all. 

Here’s today’s numbers, Hadrian’s Wall edition: 

8 - minutes that passed between our bus pulling out of Edinburgh and Mrs. Williams reminding her 15-year-old daughter to stop playing games on her phone and look up. 

15,000,000 - total sheep in Scotland, or one for each Scot. 

4 - height, in meters, of the original Hadrian’s Wall. 

5,000 — number of sandals recovered to date by cheerful retirees (and others) at the Vindolanda site.

Too many -  total number of non-native Norwegian pine trees planted in Scotland, per Robbie. They are the new colonizers. 

I’m not sure if Hadrian’s Wall could possibly have lived up to the heroic vision I’d imagined when I signed us up for this tour, but I’ll tell you one thing I noticed as we entered the Edinburgh suburbs: a chain link fence looks pretty anemic when you’ve spent the whole day looking at a 2,000 year-old stone wall.