The Antonine Wall is less well known than its southern neighbor Hadrian's Wall. There's a good reason for it. There's nowhere near as much left of this wall as that one. First off, it was never built in stone. The 'wall' is actually the very opposite of a wall. It's a ditch with a slightly higher hill on the southern side. The original embankments would have been built of earth and wood. The wall was never built from stone. It is in fact very similar to the way that Hadrian's Wall was constructed at that time. Large sections of Hadrian's Wall were originally turf and wood just like this one, with only the parts that had ready access to stone built out of it. It seems unlikely that Hadrian considered Roman expansion to be permanently at an end. He was well known for shoring up the Empire's defenses but this does not mean that he never intended it to expand again. At any rate his successors abandoned his wall and pressed northward into Scotland. Antoninus Pius pushed the line to just north of Glasgow and built the wall that is named after him. This wall was not as easy to defend as the southern one even though it's only about half as long. The area that it's built in is pretty flat and any hills are not utterly unscalable. It was abandoned within twenty years only to be reoccupied later by Septimius Severus and then abandoned again.
The Falkirk Wheel is one of the more interesting places in that town. It is a giant machine designed to raise canal boats from one level to another. Usually they just do this by putting the boat in a lock which raises or lowers the water level and then sends the boat through. Whether because the change in altitude is too sudden or for some other reason the people of Falkirk designed this method. It's a giant wheel that picks up the canal boats and raises them directly to the upper level. The people running this have been quite clever and turned it into a children's park. There are water sports and playgrounds and they treat the ride up like a ride. They also served me a hamburger that left me vomiting all night and made me miss my bus back. It might be better to avoid the food here. The reason that we went to the Wheel is that it is very close to Rough Castle, the first of our stops on the Antonine Wall.
The path to Rough Castle is a pretty popular one. The area is used as a public park and there were several families there including one group playing football (soccer).
Rough Castle was a major fort on the wall. Its name is unknown because it wasn't occupied for long enough to be recorded by historians but it was of a comparable size to Housesteads fort on Hadrian's Wall. Unusually for a Roman fort it is built on a flat plain. Looking from the fort there is a large river valley to the left but only open plain to the right. A natural defense on one side is about as good as could be expected in this area. Further west there are many hills but not here.
In front of the ditch that is all that remains of the wall are a series of holes. These holes originally contained wooden spikes and were designed to prevent a frontal assault from the Picts. That they needed to resort to such measures shows what a weak position the Roman fort was in.
It is possible to make out the basic layout of the fort. There are a series of depressions in the earth which form the outline of the fort. Signs scattered around the area give more details on how the buildings were used and where the gates were. It's actually kind of fun to try and figure it out. There isn't as much left as at Hadrian's Wall but it's always interesting to see where these things are located. That's just as interesting as the remains themselves.
55°59'51.68"N, 3°51'22.37"W
Bar Hill fort is located in Twechar. It's a fair few miles away from Rough Castle. This one is located in a rather better position being on the top of a hill. Curiously the wall continues along the middle of the hill while the fort is at the top. I'm not sure why that is. To get to the fort we had to park at a pub called the Antonine Arms and walk. The fort is located about half a mile up the path. It'll be on the left hand side. Once you get to a metalic dome you've gone too far and need to go back just a bit and turn off.
This fort was made of stone and has rather more remaining. The outlines of the buildings are much more clearly visible and make it clear just how small a fort this really was. There couldn't have been more than a few dozen people stationed here.
The headquarters building is located close to the entrance behind a mass of other administrative buildings. These rooms seem barely big enough to fit a cot and reflect the small size of the fort. The regular soldiers lived in barracks on either side of this building. That they left no foundations suggests to me that they were never built in stone.
Down the hill towards the wall there is the bath house. While the Romans did put these everywhere I was rather surprised to see them in such a small fort. Admittedly it is a pretty small bath house. There were a bunch of teenagers hanging around here drinking and lounging around. I guess this is where locals come when they want to get away from the town.
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55°57'31.63"N, 4° 4'19.05"W
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