Intro
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Black Carts Turret is at the beginning of the stretch of mostly intact wall. This is located just next to the path up to Green Carts Farm, where we stayed the previous night.
Black Carts Turret
Limestone Corner
Limestone Corner
Limestone Corner
We had an absolutely beautiful rainbow here. A picture can't possibly do justice to just how gorgeous this scenery was. The problem is of course, that when there's a rainbow there's going to be rain. For the next hour it drizzled on and off, but because of the way we were going it was all blown in our faces at 30 miles per hour. This essentially prevented me from taking any pictures of the next bit. Or at least taking any facing west.
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Broclita (Carrowburgh)
Broclita (or possibly Proclita. The two signs have different spellings) was
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Carrow Vallum
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We came off the trail right by an abandoned house of some kind. I've no idea what was here, but it doesn't look any older than 18th/19th Century. Whoever lived here had a long way to go to reach civilization!
This is one of the best views you can get of the Vallum. This is on the south side of the wall, so this ditch would have been used to keep the native Britains from wandering into the military zone.
Vercovicium (Housesteads)
Housesteads is by far the most extreme of the forts on the wall. All of the others are positioned on as flat a terrain as possible. Housesteads isn't. In fact, it's on top of a hill looking over a cliff. As such the buildings on it don't really seem to fit the standard layout as well as you might normally expect.
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Praetorium
Principia. Since the Principia was always in the same place in relation to the roads you can tell that the road going up the hill was the
via principalis while the one headed east-west was the
via praetoria. In other words this fort was laid out facing east, with both its main gates running parallel to the wall. In fact, the north gate is in a particularly bad position for anyone wanting to go into Caledonia. The entire north side is basically a cliff face. If you want to get down the cliff you're better off traveling sideways to a better turret and heading out from there.
Hospital (Valetudinarium)
Hospital (Valetudinarium)
Granaries (Horrea)
Granaries (Horrea)
Barracks
Bathhouse (Balneae)
North Gate (
Porta Principalis Sinistra)
Turret 36b
West Gate (
Porta Decumana)
Bakehouses (Pistrinae)
Milecastle 37
Cuddy's Crags
Housesteads Crags
Hotbank Crags
Crag Lough
Hotbank Farm
Crag Lough
Crag Lough
Crag Lough
Sycamore Gap
Sycamore Gap
Sycamore Gap
Crag Lough
Milecastle , colloquially known as Castle Nick, is one of the better preserved milecastles on the wall. You can see clearly the foundations for the buildings in the interior. I like this one because it emphasizes Roman precision oddly enough. This is a dreadful place for a fort. A tribal army armed with rocks can sit on either hill and pelt you with rocks and there's nothing you can do about it. So why build it here? Because it's exactly a mile away from the last milecastle of course! Yes, they really were that silly sometimes. With forts they took care to place them well, but with turrets and milecastle forget about it!
Unnumbered Turret
Steel Rig
Peel Crags
Steel Rig
I really love Once Brewed. It was probably the nicest place we stayed the entire trip. It may only be a hostel but the rooms are comfortable, the employees friendly, and they serve hot meals.
Once Brewed Lobby
Vindolanda (Chesterholm)
We took a day off hiking to go to Vindolanda, which is only about a mile away from the hostel. This is probably the most impressive fort around, but it's located two miles south of the wall and therefore counts as a supply fort and not a wall one. Definitely worth seeing.
Day's Journey
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