After last night’s crash, and the trip to A&E (luckily I’m told it is almost impossible to break your sternum unless you’re very old and frail – which makes sense when you think about the stuff it is protecting…) I ventured jingerly into the centre of Newcastle on the rather misnamed Metro.

My slightly jaundiced view of the town wasn’t improved by the difficulty of finding directions to the Museum of Antiquities. The first couple of railway staff looked at me like I was speaking Japanese and of three people at the tourist office booth only one knew what I was talking about, a fact of which he was inordinately proud. (Should you need to ask for directions asking for the University of Newcastle might prove more effective.)

It was, however, worth the hunt. Although of the old and traditional form, it is a very nice collection. Centre-stage is a complete scale model of the wall and surrounding topography – impossible to photograph, but providing an excellent sense of where I’d been.

Its one piece of (rather antique) bells and whistles is a reconstruction of a temple of Mithras (20p in the slot), with commentary and flickering “candles”. The image below is taken from the excellent Mithras and His Temples on the Wall pamphlet.

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Corbridge to Whiteley Bay, 30-plus miles

Last night enjoyed another excellent feed, at the aptly named Victuals Restaurant. Corbridge is a self-consciously arty town – “artisan” goldsmiths, an organic cafe, lots of galleries, which is sort of appropriate as a modern (and ancient) island of culture in a sea of barbarians.

For just down the road is the carefully named Corbridge “Roman site” – not a fort, or at least not primarily one, but a settlement that having so begun developed into a victualling and general supply centre for the garrisons of the wall (at the site of a Roman bridge across the Tyne – parts of which were recently excavated).

Collected in the excellent little museum on the site is the sculpture from settlement, and from many of the nearby forts. The style might be kindly described as “naive”, but it is also very lively, fun, and sometimes moving. The most famous example is “the Corbridge Lion, above, a fine piece of sculpture. Originally a grave monument, it was later, rather ignominiously, turned into a fountain, with water gushing through the lion’s mouth.
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Haltwhistle to Corbridge, 26 miles

First off this morning the wonderfully evocative name of Vindolanda. It was, until March 1973, just another fort – nicely enough preserved, and in a wonderful sheltered valley behind the wall – indeed behind the line of what is now known as Stanegate – the road that formed the lime (temporary border) before the wall was built. But it was then that the first of the writing tablets that have provided wonderful insight into wall life were found. (I’ve written before about the “birthday” invitation one that is usually on display in the British Museum.)

I won’t chart them in detail – this site does a wonderful job – except to note that they were found near these wooden markers for one of the gates of the early wooden fort (left) from which they date). But I will rave about many of the recently discovered objects on display in the museum. (No photos allowed unfortunately.)

The sodden, anaerobic conditions allow the most remarkable things to survive – not just leather (“more than 1,000 items of footwear”) and a horse’s ceremonial leather headdress (chamefron), but even more remarkable are wigs/hairpieces made from local “hair-moss”. They look to me more like furry hats, but they are anyway astonishingly well preserved.

In 2001 they also found a helmet-crest made out of the same material – the only one known. They may have been decoration, unit identification or rank identification. Centurions wore them transverse across the skull, ordinary soldiers’ ran up from the line of their nose down to the back of their necks.

A narrow and finely proportioned horse skull – which fitted the chamefron perfectly – suggests Arab blood had been introduced into the Roman stock here.
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Carlisle to Haltwhistle, 26 miles. The tour company says there are “a few hills”. I’d call that two killer hills, c. 200m straight up.

First, the sign of the day – I worried for my bicycle, but luckily the cows weren’t in residence, only a small mob of sheep, who were keeping well away from an Irish wolfhound accompanying one visitor.

But that’s getting ahead of myself. The day started with Carlisle Castle, a child’s storybook idea of a fortress, with its visible structure dating back to Norman times. (Although it goes back even further, for this is Roman Luguvalium, recently widely excavated for the construction of the new museum. And it was the promise of an exhibition from that excavation that made me decide to spend the morning at the castle. It didn’t disappoint.

In the “stop press” section was a report on this unimpressive-looking sherd that in fact tells quite a tale. For miraculously surviving on these clay labels are the ink labels:

Fish relish
from Tangiers
old
excellent
quality

Missing are the labels indicating when it was made and the quantity it contained. It was found outside the commanding officer’s house from around 100AD, where it was probably thrown when empty. It would have been far too expensive for anyone else in the fort.
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