Ambleside to Hayden Bridge

July 29:  Today, we left Ambleside and the Lake District for our tour of Scotland.  We got up early to finish packing, prepare lunch, clean out the refrigerator, eat breakfast and grab cups of coffee from our favorite coffee bar (using our "frequent flyer" card to get a free cup).  We loaded the 5 suitcases, 3 packs, and several bags of other stuff into the car.  We used all of the space in the car leaving barely enough room to sit.

We drove northward toward Patterdale, going out of Ambleside by way of Kirkstone Pass on a road called "The Struggle," a 20% graded road.  We stopped for the view at Kirkstone, which is at over 1,400 feet elevation; the inn located at the pass is reputedly the highest in England.  We drove down past Brothers Water and into Patterdale, seeing several sights from our Coast-to-Coast walk - the restaurant whose owner' s young daughter had walked the trail 3 times, the White Lion, and the Grisedale B&B.  We stopped at the next village, Glenridding, and the National Park Visitor Center.  In December 2015, after a month of heavy rain, the beck that flows through the town flooded, wiping out streets, inundating buildings, and undermining many foundations. The creek bed is under flood protection upgrades with a wider bed and new, reinforced concrete sidewalls with rock overlays).   The visitor center is in a "temporary" trailer which the Rangers say may become permanent.  The corner of the old visitor center was undermined and flooded.  The Rangers said it costs too much to reconstruct, so the Park is just going to leave it standing and empty.

We drove to Penrith and continued east to the historic "cathedral and castle town" of Durham.  We parked in a high tech parking garage (your license plate is read when you enter the garage, then upon leaving, you type the plate number in at a kiosk and it calculates your parking charge) and walked up to the top of the central plaza to the Cathedral.  It is considered the finest intact Norman-style cathedral in the world and dates back to the 11th century, shortly after the Norman Conquest.    It has twin square towers at the west end and a newer, more gothic-style bell tower toward the other end.  The architecture evolved over time, with several additions.  The Norman-style (notably circular arches) remains in the central portion of the complex, which took only about 40 years to construct, comparatively fast for a cathedral.  The main columns are more massive that those of later Gothic cathedrals.  We wandered around the entire inside and walked the four sides within the attached cloister.  No photographs were allowed inside, though I snuck a couple while in the cloister.  We had an interesting chat with one of the many volunteers that roam around inside.

From the Cloister

We next drove north and west to a small town, Hayden Bridge, and checked into the Anchor Inn, a pub undergoing some rejuvenation by the new owners.  We then drove up toward Hadrian's Wall and Housesteads Roman Fort.  By the way, driving on the narrow roads is a bit stressful since with larger trucks and buses, one only has a few inches of clearance on either side and the locals don't seem to slow down when they approach you.  I do slow though I am getting a little better hugging the left side of my lane.  The farmers in Land Rovers are the speediest drivers.

Housesteads was interesting.  The fort, which dates from about the third century AD,  is about 1/2 mile from the parking area, up on a bluff with good views to the north (toward the 'Barbarians').  We got oriented by watching a 20-minute movie that showed the remains as there are now and graphically reconstructed what the scholars believe they originally looked like.  After the movie, we walked all over the site, seeing remnants of the commander's house,  the HQ/Administration building, the soldiers' barracks (housing up to 800 soldiers), the hospital, grain storage, the bakery, and latrines.  The layout is like all Roman forts, roughly square-shaped, with 4 gates in the middle of each wall.  The fort's north wall was integral to Hadrian's Wall itself.

Central heating Roman-style

The Latrine, with running water

 We made one more stop before returning to the Anchor Inn, to see the remains of  Brocolitia, a temple to Mithras, a minor Roman god.  It was small, roughly 20 by 10 feet, with an anteroom, altars, wooden screens, and earthen benches for seating.  Only a few carved stone pieces remain inside the stone outline of the temple but you could picture soldiers or camp-followers coming here to wish for a promotion or healthy children.

Temple of Mithras

Dinner was at the Anchor, which had a good kitchen, offering creative variations (and generous servings) on typical pub food.