A fun packed weekend started with sleeping in for gutbusting and heading southward towards Blanchlands for lunch in the cellar bar of the Lord Crewe Arms Hotel. We wandered around the fireplace with a priest hole and read the tale of how monks were saved from ravaging Scots by prayers which were answered by a fog, which the poor navigating Scots couldn’t cope with and led them astray. Unfortunately for the monks they rang their monastery bell in triumph which led the murderous Scots to them. Refuelled we headed for Hadrians Wall, avoiding the Roman Fort on the top of the hill for the great views at Steel Rigg and the less than impressive wall which Scots who had romped around the ridges of Glen Coe would not really be too troubled with. The rain started to come on so we abandoned the clamber up the crags but it would be worth returning there.
Vindolanda is an impressive excavation of a roman fort and settlement with reconstructed mileforts, shop with plastic romans and a temple to the water nymphs. The museum has some very interesting artifacts and has a video of how they found the highest prized archaeological find in the UK – the letters from the romans analysed using infrared imagery to read personal tales of how they loved money and women.
Popped into see our psychiatrist chum, whose twin daughters need 4 D’s in their exams, including English, to get into their beauty therapy course (if they don’t they have to sit module one, which begs the question what the hell is in module one). He used to work in the heroin unit in Manchester (8 beds for a population of 5 million) where they got the really bad cases with veins in their penis collapsing and injecting into their neck, absolutely dangerous and awful. Methadone worked and they were physically off Heroin within a week but due to their life style they were back on and partying plus getting a bigger hit after being weaned off it. Experts in all drugs they knew that they could kick heroin, until either HIV or old age (when they simply gave up the lifestyle) got to them, but Benzo’s (Valium et al) took a month or two to get off (the housewife’s choice being harder to kick than opiates.
Corbridge was a surprise – a delightful town with a Saxon church dating from 634 and a delicious Indian meal (the guidebook said that there was a service where an Indian Waiter would be on the train from Newcastle taking orders and serving drinks so the meal was ready when the train arrived).
And so to Little Sparta – the magical garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay outside Dunsyre, near Biggar – which of course entailed an ice cream at Caldwells of Innerleithen. Acres of established garden with ponds and waterfalls and littered with sculptures and rocks with poems carved on them. The weather was perfect with fluffy cumulus and the sun casting shadows all over the sculptures. A tenner per person to get in and a long walk to the gardens, nicely keeps the riff raff at bay which allows a personal and unhurried experience – we took over 2 hours wandering around and enjoying the entire garden. Kim enjoyed a different experience being on SSRI’s and was wandering around in a daze mesmerised by the poetry for the entire meander randomly through the garden – quite why she didn’t fall off the stepping stones or open bridges is beyond me. Fish and chips at Biggar ended a perfect day and we got in the car just as the rain started.
And so July descends into Harry Potter month from a series of books including The Philosopher’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets, The Prisoner of Azkaban, The Goblet of Fire, The Order of the Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince we await the Deathly Hallows. In the meantime ‘The End of Harry Potter?’ provides some interesting insights into naming etymology and professional literary misdirection. And the movie is out this month too. With the post office on strike perhaps we will resort to using owls this month.
