Markus's Photo Blog: Driving along Hadrian's wall

This year's holiday went to two destinations - to Hadrian's wall up in the north and Cornwall in the south. We spent five days in the beginning of August up north. Hadrian's Wall was built by the Roman emperor Hadrian from AD 122 and served as protection of the Roman Empire from the northern tribes. The wall was 117.5 km long and went from coast to coast. When active the wall was 3.5-6m tall and 3-6m wide. Amazing when you think about it. So we decided to drive a total of 1,000 miles (1,600km) to check it out!

First stop was, however, the Singing Ringing Tree, a wind powered wind sculpture overlooking Burnley in Lancashire (England). As understood the tree creates sound. Pretty cool (you can find videos of it on Youtube).

My name is Bond, Ms Bond...

We spent the first night in Carlisle. In 1525 the Archbishop of Glasgow invoked a curse against cross-border families who lived by stealing cattle and pillage. For the millennium celebrations the local council commissioned a 14-tonne stone with all 1,069 words of the curse.

In 1998 some Christians tried to prevent the installation. A minority whipped up a furore about the stone, blaming a number of the city's setbacks on the curse stone - including and outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, various crimes, rising unemployment and even the fate of its football team (which was relegated out of the league). They were not successful in stopping the stone.

On towards the wall... Here doing research in the sun while having lunch

The wall - here at Walltown Crags

After driving by the Sycamore Tree a number of times we had to stop and take its picture. Not without peril - there was a deep ditch next to the road! Polly (our car) was not the happiest of campers but we DID get the picture!