Our Travels and Adventures Through The UK: Jun 24, 2014

Well, we have places to go and more to see all on this same day, so we left Castle Douglas and Threave Castle and headed east to Hadrian's Wall! It was built beginning in A.D. 122, ordered by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. (Roman invasion of Britain began about A.D. 43) It is not clear what the purpose of building the wall was, but it is possible that it was built so Rome could keep out the 'barbarians'. It is not thought that it was a border between Scotland and England. It runs east to west along the southern portion of Scotland. At one time it was as much as 12 feet high in some places and as much as 20 feet high in other places, while being up to 6 feet wide. Can you imagine the work involved in building such a massive wall - and the great protection it would be as well.

From here, you could see your enemies approaching!

A magnificent old tree along our walk to the wall.

There is a rock quarry along the river that is visible on the walk up the hill to the Wall.

After leaving Alnwick Castle, we headed to Berwick-upon-Tweed. This quaint village is futher up the eastern coast of the UK and is the northern most village in England. It is right on the coast of the North Sea. It sits at the mouth of the River Tweed and is only 2 1/2 miles south of the border of Scotland. This village has a most colorful history and has changed hands between the Scots and the English 13 times!

Berwick-upon-Tweed is / was a walled city. The wall was once constructed in 1318 by the Scots as fortification against England, later most of it was torn down and reconstructed by the English as fortification against the Scots when it was taken by the King of England, Edward I. The more I read about this 'back and forth' between the Scottish and the British, the more confused I become, but there is a wonderfully old, historic wall around the village, but much of the village has grown out to the north of those walls. Someone in Scotland said that half of it is in England and half is in Scotland. I did not find that to be the case in my research, but perhaps due to growth, it has expanded over the border.

We stayed at a charming B&B for the night, having decided it was too long of a drive to go all the way back to Glasgow because tomorrow we would be heading to Edinburgh, just a short distance from Berwick. We arrived into Berwick in the early evening, and once we got our luggage to our place we began walking around the village in search of a place to eat. Interestingly enough, because it was Sunday, we found our choices very limited.

Finally found this place to eat dinner.

We had planned to take a walk down to the sea after we ate, but as we were heading that way, a severe rainstorm began. We quickly turned around and headed back to our B&B, soaking wet by the time we got there! In the morning we took time to walk around the village some and walk on top of the wall. Beautiful views from up there!