So yesterday was an early start. Well, for some people it was an early start. Ian, Austin and Freyja made a 9:00 dash to Wifi enabled McDonalds so that Ian could deal with some business, Austin could sort his eBay stuff out and Freyja could send some emails. The rest of us had egg and bacon sandwiches.

Then we went out a-hunting Romans.

We are about a 40 minute drive from various bits of Hadrian’s wall so we went off for a look-see.

First, Housebanks Fort, which is a 10 minute or walk from the road up quite a steep hill. I took my walking stick - to the amusement/consternation of my children who hadn’t seen me with a stick before. I don’t actually need it - but it comes in handy for hills and mounds and balance when balance is needed and there is no Builder to hang on to.

It was windy at Housebanks Fort. I was glad of my cardie.

We were going to go to Birdoswald. But the guidebook I had acquired at Housebanks suggested there wasn’t much there. So we drove along anyway, just for the drive.

Then we made a detour to Haltwhistle, allegedly the centre of Britain, in search of fuel for both cars and for bread for our picnic lunch.

And on to Vindolanda where we carted in our ENORMOUS picnic (I think we really, really over-catered!) for a late lunch. The boys took the boxes back to the car and then we set off to explore. It’s a huge site, and still being excavated. Actively excavated. There were archaeologists busy in several roped off areas. Apparently it will take something around 100 years to excavate it fully.

And so back to the farm. The Interneters went back to McDonalds to sort a few more things out. Then we all went to a local pub for dinner

It didn’t inspire much confidence when we went in. The publicans have only been there three weeks. The menus aren’t ready (although we have one in the cottage - but apparently it’s wrong). We couldn’t see any vegetarian options. But in the end the meal wasn’t bad. It was good home-cooked food. Not salty. (Apart from Freyja’s leek and cheese pie). The chef obliged by making us all some mighty fine mashed potato. The publicans seemed very stressed, but I’m not sure they need to be quite so stressed. Once they get themselves sorted out it will all be fine. Card readers would be useful. We tend to pay for everything by card. Fortunately, between us, we had enough cash to cover it.

Then the girls walked home (it’s only about a mile - but it would be quite a steep hill to get t the pub; nice walk coming back) and the boys brought the cars back. Then some people played Frisco. Thers of us read and pottered about. We didn’t see the meteors (I went out at about half eleven but they were not in sight) and eventaully we all went to bed.

It’s a beautiful morning. The chickens are eying The Builder’s toast with interest. Austin is hoping the courier will come to collect his large parcel this morning rather than keeping him in all day. Some of us are about to head off for a walk.

We continue to be extremely lucky with the weather. Several threatening black clouds hoved into view when we were at Vinlanda - but passed harmlessly by. This was just as well. Wehad comprehensively failed to take rain kit with us!

Freyja has woken up this morning with a sore throat and a cough :-S