Much of Madison and Morgan's stay was taken up with the music festival, but on the Monday we made a trip to see Hadrian's Wall. We were lucky, the rain, which had poured down continuously over the weekend, stopped and the sky was a clear and cold blue. We headed up the motorway to Carlisle and then east to meet the Wall. Our first stop was the Roman Army Museum where we also got a ticket to enter the remains of the wall town of Vindolanda: a fine romantic sounding name full of association with warm Mediterranean sun, olive groves and goblets of red wine, far from the reality of an army town on the cold grim border of the empire. ( Though it sounds as if it may have Latin origins the name comes from the British windo- 'fair, white, blessed', landa 'enclosure/meadow/prairie/grassy plain'.)
The museum was new and packed with a rather irritating number of video characters all eager to chat to you, as well as a 3D film of the wall with lots of reenactments that seemed rather sanitised and superficial to please and entertain a modern audience of passing tourists and schoolchildren; though there was plenty of factual information too for those not held entranced by the technical glitz.
Just wandering around the site of Vindolanda was more to my taste and I won't try to describe the site as there is so much information elsewhere.
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda
After Vindolanda we drove a couple of miles north to the Wall itself and walked a small section before setting off on our return journey over Alston Moor to Shap, where we joined the motorway again.