They built a wall…

…the Romans, that is. Starting in 122 CE (or AD if you’d like). They built a wall from one side of Britain to the other, to regulate travel and keep the south safe from Barbarica - in this case, Scotland.

In Rome, the army is power. Caesar came to power because he had support of the troops. When Octavian wanted to claim his inheritance, he bought off the army first. Any ruler worth his salt kept the army happy. And busy. Because a bored army is recipe for rebellion.

Emperor Hadrian was smart enough to recognize this, and put them to work building a wall, some forts and a milecastle every Roman mile. Sure, it was a lot about defence and transportation too. But the most important this is that the legions stationed in the North were too busy to come around and repeat the events of 69 CE (the year of four Emperors, all to fresh in the Roman mind).

Newcastle Upon Tyne stands at the Eastern-most edge of Hadrian’s Wall. Within a short journey is several major forts (Segedenum, Arbeia, Vindolanda, Birdoswald) and some of the most important Roman excavations going on now.

Being in Northeast, I’ve had a chance to visit some Roman ruins. We went out to Vindolanda about a week and a half ago. At Vindolanda, they found the only surviving examples of Roman papyri. Written in strange cursive Latin, the Vindolanda tablets show us daily life on the Roman frontier. From birthday party invitations to requests for leave, the tablets offer an amazing insight.

They’ve already done extensive excavations at Vindolanda, and they’re in the process of doing more. You can see a bathhouse, a granary, and several other buildings from the fort and the town that grew up around it to cater to the Roman army. You can see the complex system of wells and waterways that made it possible to supply water to almost every building. You can also see the remains of how they kept themselves warm in the cold Northeastern winter - the heated floors.

The second place I went was Birdoswald, where one of my professors is leading an excavation on a Roman cemetery. He led us through the excavation, and then we walked out to the Wall and followed it for a few miles to see a milecastle and a Roman bridge.

So I have a new goal. There is a path that follows the 80 miles of Hadrian’s Wall, from coast to coast. There are hotels and hostels on the way. I want to walk the Wall…. in the summer. Apparently it only takes about a week to get from Newcastle to the West coast.

A love affair

The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.

~Isak Dinesen

I lick my lips and taste salt. The water rushes towards me and I dance away - acutely aware of my clumsiness because how can any human have grace when compared to the sea? The waves crash angrily against the pier. The wind sweeps by, carrying with it the smell of the ocean. I close my eyes and breath in deeply.

I am having a love affair with the ocean. It has been going on for years. It started long ago with waves and fresh water, the beautiful crisp smell of a lake on the breeze. It’s culminated in this - I feel better when I’m around water. In Galway, I lived minutes away from the ocean and beside the river. And when I got lonely or sad or a little too drunk, I would walk down to the infamous Galway Bay and listen to the swans fight, watch the waves crash into the rocks. Suddenly, you feel small and your problems unimportant. You feel freer, imagining that you can hitch a ride on the wind and explore the seemingly infinite ocean.

Last weekend, I had my first encounter with the North Sea. It was beautiful. The waves were so strong that they crashed into the Pier and sometimes splashed over. It was cold and windy, but it was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

I spent longer in Tynemouth, on the coast, than I had planned. After exploring the Priory for a couple of hours, I decided I need to explore the coast. So I climb down this small staircase from the Pier and picked my way through seaweed and stones to watch the waves crash against the rocks.

I started picking up rocks to keep as a reminder of my trip - the beach was full of round pebbles, smoothed by the restless sea.

On the other side of the Pier was a small bay where people more adventurous than I were sailing, and a small boat rental place to serve them. But there was also a mass of rocks, covered in seaweed, and the ruins of something at the bottom of the cliff. I decided I wanted to walk over. It was treacherous.

I slipped and tripped and had to be very careful. The worst rocks were the ones covered with the slimy green seaweed, because if you stepped on it wrong you slipped and lost your balance. I only had one slightly scary experience, though, when my foot slipped and ended up wedged between two rocks. But I caught myself, and remained largely uninjured. Thankfully.

By the end of the day I was windswept, cold and hungry. And far too late to go explore St Mary’s Lighthouse like I had planned. But it was worth it. The North Sea made me feel better, the trip reminded me why I was here - to explore.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.

~e.e. cummings

The Road Less Traveled

How many of us spend our lives in a city we barely see?

It’s the same old story. Jaded by life, we go through our days with blinders on. Without the energy or the interest to see or do things. To explore.

There’s so much in Ottawa and around that I have never seen, and I lived there for 22 years. There was tons in Galway that I never saw in my four months there. I remember walking to work one morning in Galway, following the river back behind the Roisin Dubh, watching the swans and the garbage float side by side. And suddenly I was struck by the fact that, even though I was on my way to crappy job too early in the morning and even though it smelt like vomit and stale beer, I was in Ireland. It was so easy to forget. To concentrate on hating my job or on what club we were going to go to that night.

This time, I made a decision to change that.

I made a list. It’s a whole page of places to go around Newcastle. Most of them are either in the city or on the Tyne and Wear Metro system.

My best memory from Ireland was when we crawled underneath the Blarney Castle with only the little flashlight from my keychain. Because we were terrified and had no idea where we were going or whether we might get thrown out before we got to kiss the Blarney Stone, but we were there. In this little passageway underneath a castle. People had been there before - the bottles and garbage everywhere proved that. But in a place so chalk full of tourists, for that moment it was ours.

This weekend I became an adventurer. Living in alone in a new city is terrifying and lonely at times, but I made this decision for myself and I know that I can love this. So I went exploring, to distract myself from the small ache of loneliness that followed me to London and back again.

This weekend was Heritage Open Days in Tyne and Wear. Tyne and Wear is the area of between the two named rivers, including Newcastle, Gateshead and Sunderland. They were offering special tours of many places that weren’t normally open to the public, and even the places that were normally open were free. I admit that I forgot about it entirely on Friday, and slept in quite late on Saturday. But I still managed to make it to three places on Saturday and one today.

One of the buildings I saw, Alderman Fenwick’s House wasn’t normally open at all. And the highlight of my day on Saturday was the Bell Tower at St. Nicholas Cathedral. I had gone to St. Nicholas the first Sunday I arrived in Newcastle. It’s a gorgeous old church, and I walked around inside the seemingly deserted building for a while on my way back to my flat. I returned on Sunday for two reasons. The first was that it was close to the Holy Jesus Hospital, which I visited before it, and the second was that the Heritage Open Days booklet promised a display of the oldest books in the Cathedral’s collection.

I arrived just in time for the magic words.

“So I guess you all want to go up to the tower then?” The guide said to the gathering crowd. I immediately tried to blend into the group. I definitely wanted to go up to the tower.

The staircase up the Bell Tower is impossibly narrow, steep and dark. The first place we got to was the Bell Room. From here, the Bell Ringers (who have trained for years to be able to do this) use the cords to ring the eight bells in elaborate sequences which produce the tunes you can hear for miles from the Cathedral.

We had to leave our bags here, because the staircase got narrower from then on. Right before we left, our guide rang one of the bigger bells. As we climbed the staircase, the sound buzzed through the tower. The walls trembled with the vibrations. We stopped briefly at the Bellfry to watch the huge bell swing back and forth.

We continued on to the very top of the Bell Tower. Heritage Open Days is the only time they let the public up this tower. And so we stood, where not so many had stoof before, looking out at the city of Newcastle from perhaps the highest point in the city.

You should know, I’m terrified of heights. But as I looked up, my back pressed firmly against the stone wall of the Tower, I knew it was worth it. The climb. The shaky feeling in my knees as I glanced at how far away the ground was. I was looking up at the spires of the Bell Tower, from right below. From the centre. From a spot that so few people had before.

I’ll continue the next part of my weekend adventures tomorrow, with my first trip to the North Sea.

S as in… snail?

I like to pretend I’ve got it all together. New country? Sure! I’m a pro! England can’t be that different, can it? Because after all, it’s our Motherland and we both spell the right way (colour, cheque). Easy.

Not so much.

The following is a list of the things in the last few days that have had people glaring at me and thinking “Ugh. American.” (I don’t expect many people to realize that I am, in fact, Canadian.)

1. Dollars?

Sunday I went on one of those hop-on-hop-off city tours of Newcastle. In typical fashion, I arrived at the bus stop just as the bus was pulling away and had to wait the full 30 minutes for the next one. Sigh.

When the bus finally arrived, I hopped on and smiled at the bus driver. There was a silence.

“Uh, so it’s what, 8 dollars?” I say, finally. He laughs. I try to correct myself as quickly as possible. “I mean.. pounds.. not dollars…”

“8 dollars wouldn’t get you very far, love.” You’re telling me.

2. Can you repeat that please?

I hadn’t eaten anything all day Sunday. My stomach is not happy, so I didn’t push it. After thoroughly exploring the city, I came home briefly to put away my camera and pick a place to eat from the city guide I had. I finally chose one and headed off in that direction.

I walked nearly across the city, only to discover that this place was not open on Sundays. I then proceeded to walk the streets and realize that most places weren’t open on Sundays. I wanted a real meal, something that someone brought out to me. But the only places I could find that were open were McDonald’s and Subway. A lot of the places I passed had been serving food until 5pm, but were now only serving drinks.

I finally found a place to eat. Apparently a vodka bar? But it had food. I went in and sat down. The waitress finally came to ask what I wanted to order. I ordered the veggie burger and then asked her what was on tap. Do people not ask that in England? Is there a different saying for it?

“Like, lagers?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah.” I’m so articulate. Keep in mind that this was only the second conversation I’d had outside of my head all day. She listed them all really fast. I blinked.

“Um… can you repeat that please?” I asked, timidly. I was really hoping that one of the beers she listed was Newcastle Brown, because, well, I’m in Newcastle and it’s a great beer.

“Something, something, Carlsberg, something else,” she said.

“Um, I’ll have a pint of Carlsberg…”

3. Um, which one again?

This happened to me twice. I’m okay with bills (do they call them notes here?) but as soon as I get to the change part, I can’t tell a penny from a… 20p?

When I went to pay admission for Castle Keep, it took me a good two minutes of riffling through my wallet. I knew they had a 50 cent (p?) piece. But I could not remember what it looked like.

Then I paid for my dinner. The waitress who already didn’t like me much.

“That’ll be 10 pounds and 5 p,” she said. I handed her a 20 pound note.

“Uh, I have… 5 cents.” Cursing myself in my head, I know it’s not cents. She waited. I riffled through my wallet. Finally, I gave up and pulled out a 10p and handed it to her. She gave me a look.

“It’s 5p.”

“Um, yeah, which one is that again?” I asked.

“The small silver one.”

“Oh.” I handed her the 5p.

4. S or F?

People never think of their own accents as hard to understand. I certainly never thought anyone would have any trouble understanding me. I guess it’s one of those culture-centric things we do.

Yesterday morning I called the electricity, water and broadband companies to get my accounts set up. That required stating my address. Easy enough, right?

Wrong. My postcode ends in the letters S and G.

Everytime I gave my postcode, they thought I had said F rather than S. And then when they said it back to me, I thought they were saying S rather than F. This was worst with the lady at BT Broadband. She was desperately trying to find my address in the system.

“I think I must have your postcode wrong,” she said. She spelt it out. “…And F as in foxtrot, G as in golf?”

“Oh. No. It’s S.. as in snail.” I tried to think of a better s word. It failed me. S as in snail?! Sigh.

Welcome to Newcastle, city of historic bridges!

I arrived in Newcastle on Saturday at about 11:30. Due to some type of a) food poisoning b) stomach flu or c) nerves, I had spent a good part of the morning throwing up… and trying to drag two ridiculously heavy suitcases through Heathrow. But I finally arrived and got a cab to my new “flat.”

After struggling to haul my suitcase up three flights of stairs (thankfully my very nice landlord carried one) I pretty much passed out for a couple of hours to recover from my strange disease. When I woke up (determined not to succumb to the treacherous jet lag) I went for a walk around the city to find out where I’d signed up to spend the next year of my life. The city is gorgeous. It’s very old and a whole lot bigger than I thought it was. I never got the impression from the descriptions that it had shopping at all, but there are two huge pedestrian streets of shops and three giant malls.

Today I did a sightseeing tour of the city. There was lots to see. Newcastle was built on the location of an old Roman fort, and has huge ties to Hadrian’s Wall. On top of that it’s been a city since medieval times. So there’s lots of old!

But what they seem to be proudest of is their bridges. There are six in total, going across the Tyne river from Newcastle to it’s neighbour, Gateshead.

I took that picture standing on the Millenium Bridge, and you can see four other bridges! Crazy.

By far my favourite part was Castle Keep, the castle that gave Newcastle it’s name. It was built by William the Conqueror’s son. The society of antiquities has perserved it and you can actually just walk around and explore all the different rooms and levels. It’s quite good. I love visiting castles, but with a place like Edinburgh Castle or Blarney Castle, there’s so many people and everything’s so touristy that it’s hard to really enjoy it. Castle Keep might not be as large or impressive, but it’s definitely more fun to explore.