I've been spending time at Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland and it's been a great opportunity to encounter ancestors of place. The Romans are very present here - in place names, the wall itself, the roads that follow their routes, and the areas of land they drained. Their presence forms the basis of a long distance walk, with walkers resulting in tourist infrastructure.
Much of the wall isn't in the wall itself, but has been co-opted to build other walls and buildings. There's a marker stone in the wall of the farm across the road from where I'm staying. Much of the farm is built from the wall, and apparently you can't dig far without hitting stone. The Romans are very present in this landscape, and people who live here are very much living with them.
I've done a bit of walking along the route of the wall. It's a dramatic landscape, and must be cold and bleak in the winter. In summer, being stationed here might be quite a pleasant gig, but much less so in cold weather. It must have been a bit of a system shock coming here - enough so that Romans stationed here used to wear socks under their sandals, and might even go so far as to don something resembling trousers.
I've had the opportunity to learn something about Roman military life. I've been surprised by the degree to which it was actually about building things - the wall and the roads - rather than about fighting. I hadn't previously been aware of who it was in the Roman empire who did the building, so that's been a significant thing to learn. I'm not especially drawn to the Romans, but I am always interested in ancestors of land, and right now, they are the dominant ancestors in the landscape I'm visiting.
As a young man, my father walked Hadrian's wall. It's interesting being in a place where I know he walked. We've done very little walking together since I was a child, so there are all kinds of interesting aspects to this for me.
It's been a great experience for developing the Pagan Pilgrimage book I'm currently writing. It's also been exciting having time in a landscape unfamiliar to me - not something I've been able to do for some years. It's rekindled in me the desire for adventure, and to walk in places unfamiliar to me. I've been sorely limited over the last three years especially. However, life is opening up at the moment and I think there will be more adventures in unfamiliar places.
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